Playing Chess with Gerry Lopez

Gerry Lopez came to the U.S. as an infant, earned his way through GW and Harvard, and rewired industries at Starbucks and AMC—always measuring success by more than money. In this conversation, he shares the mindset behind career “chess moves,” the art of nurturing relationships, lessons from taking AMC public, and a grounded definition of wealth that starts with family, faith, and showing up.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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Speaker 2 (00:04):
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(00:46):
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Speaker 1 (01:18):
Welcome to the Wealth Break.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
This is where we unlock stories of financial success, pushing,
breaking down odds, being yourself and ending it in a
way which we hope closes the wealth gap.

Speaker 1 (01:40):
Hello and welcome back. This is the Wealth Break. I'm
Rodney Williams and I'm Travis Holloway.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
Today you have an incredible conversation with Jerry Lopez, an
incredible career, Cuba, Puerto Rico.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
And so what seems to be like every state and
also every logo.

Speaker 3 (01:58):
I visited old fifty, I've only lived about half a dozen.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
Well half Yeah, we can't wait to dive into your story.

Speaker 3 (02:04):
Happy to share.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
Awesome for the first question.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
Honestly, I would just love to get a quick summary
of your time.

Speaker 3 (02:11):
I came to the US when I was literally nine
months old from Cuba, born in Cuba, came to the
US at the time. You know, time tested story that
is so prevalent, particularly here in Miami. And you know,
throughout my entire upbringing, I always remember my parents and
my grandparents instilling in me it is hired to learn
and desired to get better and progress and move forward.

(02:32):
And I don't have a day that I remember in
my entire life that that desire for excellence and learning
and moving forward was not part of my conversation with
my parents and my friends and my family.

Speaker 4 (02:44):
So, Jerry, how has that transition from Cuba to Puerto Rico,
to the US to corporate America. How has that kind
of shaped your perspective of what wealth has meant for
you at different points throughout your life.

Speaker 3 (02:58):
It has shaped it in many different ways. In the
early years, wealth meant primarily two things, education and cash.
You know, we you know, we came essentially with the
close on our back, so that in those early years,
in the early stages, wealth was all about was an
aspirational idea because you know, you basically we left with nothing.
But then over the years, as I progress in you know,

(03:20):
in my life and my career, I learned that wealth
is actually much more nuance and much more complicated than
those two dimensions. And what I will tell you as
I was thinking about the conversation this morning, Fellaws, like
I thought about, wealth is very equivalent to faith in
that it is, you know, very nuance and very complicated
and also very personal. Today I consider wealth to include
things like health and relationships with family and friends, and

(03:43):
lifestyle and you know, and those kind of things. So
it goes well beyond yours the.

Speaker 2 (03:47):
Cash or the education one hundred percent. What was the
wealth lesson for your kids? Was there another a conversation
about positioning them for.

Speaker 3 (03:57):
Well, that's a great question. You know, we never wanted
them to feel like, you know, money was you know, abundant.
But we also didn't want ever to have them feel like,
you know, they were lacking for anything. So they always
had a great access to great education. And you know,
I kind of smile and laugh now because my kids
never grew up in a house I didn't have a PC.

(04:17):
You know, we all grew up. You know. I remember
the first big purchase I made when I got to
college was a type an electric typewriter because I know
always going to need it. Right, my kids, you know
are now Toty two and Toty have always grown in
the house with a PC. I still remember buying the
first PC when there were babies. Okay, So they, on
the one hand, have grown with you know, lacking for nothing,
wanting for nothing. On the other hand, you know, we

(04:39):
didn't want them to feel like, Okay, money's always available
and it's easy, and it's there for the grabbing. We always,
my wife and I always try to instill them them
a sense of like you need to have some skin
in the game and you need to work. You know,
you need to work for it's not gonna be handed
to you. You need to earn it one hundred percent. So
how did you get your start right.

Speaker 4 (04:55):
So obviously we know the story of immigration, but how
did you get your start diving into corporate America?

Speaker 5 (05:02):
Like what was your first entry point? And then from there?

Speaker 4 (05:06):
How were you able to transcend so many different industries
and become so successful in so many different avenues.

Speaker 3 (05:13):
I grew up in the household where going to college
was never presented as an optional thing, so it was
always I mean like, I literally was a sophomore in
college by the time I realized that this college thing
was kind of an optional. I could have opted out
after high school. I don't think I would have, but
you know, education was such a big driving factory in
my upbringing with my parents that to me, it was

(05:36):
never like, oh, ye, you know, you can finish high
school and then opt out and go do something else.
College was always going to be part of the mix,
and the education was always part of the mix. My
father and my mother made great sacrifices for me to
go to a private Catholic school and started going to
a public school, so it was always part of our mix.
At education was the driver, was kind of the foundation.
So the first entry or the first step was always education.

(05:58):
I went to college in d c. Washington, DC. Out
of Puerto Rico. A lot of my friends opted to
stay near home, and I always knew that I was
going to want to come to the States and d C.
I applied to something like four or five different colleges.
My parents and went to college in the States, so
we didn't know any better, right, So I just applied
to a few schools that I had done some research
back then. You know, this isn't the pre internet era,

(06:18):
so we knew about a couple of different colleges. So
I applied, got accepted at George Washington University. So went
to gw for my undergrad you know, had a great
time in DC. You know, got to know the city,
got to you know, be a teaching assistant. Met a
professor who gave me my first break came in at
school by becoming a TA. That that professor was the
first one that said, you know, you speak funny, but

(06:39):
you're having tredible drives and you're never going to shake
the accent. Still have it shaken the accent obviously, okay,
but guess what I had a work ethic and a
drive that he was able to appreciate and said, I
need somebody with your driving your work ethic to help
me teach discourses. So I became a teaching assistant and
involved things marketing research. I was doing well back then
called SPSS, which is a statistical problem for social sciences.

(07:02):
So I became a statistical analysis guy. So I was
teaching the lab for the marketing course, and that was
kind of my first entry into the work life and
into like how education can lead to, you know, to
a better place. So I did that. And then as
I was getting ready to graduate undergrad graduate College, the
idea which was putting my head by my father I
blame him for this, was you need to go get

(07:23):
an MBA. But if you go go get an MBA,
you need to get an MBA one of the top
ten schools, because otherwise why I spend the money at
the time, so I applied to guess what the top
ten schools and Harvard me and me, so pretty quickly
it became evident that you know, hey, once you got
accepted by Harvard, you're not going to turn him down.
Not back then anyway. I don't know that you would today,
you know anyhow, but certainly it did not back then.

(07:44):
So I got accepted. My class was the last class
that got deferred myths, so you had to wait. You
had to go work for two years and then go
to school. So I worked for two years in the
power company, you know, local power company and disease or
my professor that had giving me my first break had
a consult contract. So I became kind of like, you know,
the assistant to the consulting contract. And that was my
first work experience was in the power company in DC,

(08:07):
and then went to Harvard, you know, grated with an MBA,
and then went from there to Procter and Gamble. My
father had worked for Procter and Gamble in Cuba, so
I was kind of like a legacy admit to Procter
and Gamble. I was definitely not a legacy admit to Harvard.
It was you know, it's always a top get conversation
for all my interview processes. I always remained in industries
as many industries have been in the one common trad
is always says in the consumer, so many many multiple transaction,

(08:30):
millions of transactions or small value rather than big transactions.
You know, real estate, for example, which is a business
that i'm today you know involved in through Bord Directors
and so on are a few transactions of huge value.
The businesses that I actually grew up in were many,
many millions of transactions of small value. You know, Starbucks
a copper coffee, well, I mean three or four You
say what you want about the price of the coffee,

(08:50):
but there's still you know, small value relatively speaking. So
it was always you know, how do you cater to
the consumer? That forced me to always pay attention to
the consumer and what's happening at the macro level, and
you know, kind of pay attention to what's going on
in the marketplace. You know, how to read their room,
so to speak.

Speaker 2 (09:04):
You know, one of the things you mentioned was like
the power of value, and your professor and others seeing
that grit, you know, always said, especially in our current life,
that's probably what separated us as founders. We're not the
ones you're going to pick out of the bunch, but
at the end of the day, we tend to outwork
and be resilient. How is that value appreciated? I worked

(09:27):
at P ANDNG. We did a couple of different way places.
You know, it seems that over time it's appreciated, But
is it really the X factor?

Speaker 3 (09:35):
I think it is now I will tell you this,
it's not universally appreciated. So you have to find the places,
the locations and the people that appreciate it and then
maximize those. I used to work when I was at
AMC with Stacy Spikes. I don't know if you guys
have read about Stacy Spikes and Movie pass was the
name of the company that he founded. Stacy and his
partner Hammet founded a company movie pass Right and Movie Past.

(09:57):
The idea was that, you know, you essentially it's a
suspicion to go to the movie theater. Well, their idea
got rejected, you know, universally by all the studios. Now
they tried to do it, you know, without getting the
studios and durships because I couldn't get it. People couldn't
see the value. Well, when I you know, when I
finally finally got a chance to meet Stacy's like, wait
a minute, there's value here. Their interest and my interests
were aligned. So I gave you an opportunity because their

(10:19):
their goal and my goals were perfectly aligned. I said,
you know, they were trying to get human beings into
the theater. We used to call it button seats, right,
So I meet Stacey and his partner and you know
startup you know operation like you guys, and they have
been rejected across Hollywood because nobody wanted to talk to them.
Nobody wanted to meet with them Hollywood for all of
the talk. Okay, it's they reject people who are not
from the environment, like like an antibody. So I was

(10:43):
an outsider into that system as well, so being an outsider,
you know, and these two fellows come with this what
I thought was a great idea. Is like, hey, and
they were being rejected everywhere, and I'm like, you know what,
I know that I recognized that behavior of being rejected
with a good idea. So it's like, let me listen.
I'll give you the I'll give you the appointment because
I want to listen to your idea and turn the
idea had a lot of value. Eventually, they end up
selling the company, and the story is being you know,

(11:03):
well documented, and things didn't quite work out, you know,
the way that they had hoped for, because there was
a lot of mistakes made by people who bought their
company and so on. But the notion of value that
was intrinsic and was there, and it was the power
of the idea and not being recognized that is universal.
Here's what I would tell you about it. Don't feel
special because it happens to everybody all the time, in
every industry, everywhere. I've seen it a lot. Okay, So

(11:25):
the trick is not get rejected. Trick is what happens
when you get rejected? Do you go home and mope
and oh gee, they're discriminated against me, And I feel like,
you know, I could have and I should it and
I might have, and they Hey, guess what, man suit up? Okay,
it's a contact sport. If and if you're gonna if
you're gonna you know, every time they knock you down,
you're gonna stay down. Yeah, you're gonna have a problem.
I preferred to every time they knocked me down, I

(11:47):
prefer to get back up.

Speaker 5 (11:48):
Yeah. Do you have any advice for those?

Speaker 4 (11:51):
To Rodney's point, sometimes we wouldn't be the founders or
the entrepreneurs that someone at face value would just pick
out of the bunch and maybe it could be your
accent or all of our skin colors. Right, but like,
what's your take on how do you create that separation?

Speaker 5 (12:06):
Earlier on?

Speaker 4 (12:07):
Because before they understand how strong our work ethic is
and how relentless we are and how resilient we are.
Kind of have to get ourselves in the door and
would love to get your perspective on ways that you
can separate yourself from the bus.

Speaker 3 (12:22):
So a couple of things. Power of the idea and networking. Okay,
people talk about networking all the time. It's not about
just the network, and it's the nurturing of the relationships, right,
It's sustaining touch. I was at Starbucks for many years.
I developed a relationship and I hope she doesn't mind
me speaking about it with Melody Hobson, Okay, melodies an

(12:43):
incredible individual. I left Starbucks to go run AMC Theaters
as a CEO. Many years after, many months after I
left AMC, I run into Melody at an event. It
was like I had never left. It was like my
long loved sister. Okay. And it's the power of nurturing
that relationship. It's not that Melody knew me and I
knew melow this Like the moment I saw her across
the room at a different event, it was like, oh

(13:04):
my god, how have you been? She nurture is they
post a child for nurturing relationships. That woman is amazing. Okay,
So that's it's the power of an idea and it's
a nurturing of those relationships and that networking that eventually
carry it because getting that food in the door, that
first break is hard and then it's upon us that
it's at some level of success, you know, to bring

(13:25):
you know, open the doors for others to come along.

Speaker 5 (13:29):
Awesome. I think that's great advice.

Speaker 4 (13:31):
A lot of people do net work and they do
the first handshake and they give the business card and
they never follow.

Speaker 3 (13:36):
Yeah, they never follow up, and that happens. That is
extremely common. That's a big mistake.

Speaker 4 (13:41):
I always tell people, you know, we will have speaking
engagements and people will be like, oh, you give your
phone I brought up, Like yeah, because it's never gonna
call me anyway, It doesn't it doesn't really matter.

Speaker 3 (13:50):
It makes me.

Speaker 4 (13:51):
It appears to me that like I am open, like
I am willing to help, but nobody ever cause anyway,
So it doesn't really matter. So ess for you is
so you led organizations as large as twenty thousand employeees
and you did that simultaneous with building a family, and
would love to get your perspective on building a business,

(14:15):
supporting your company, but also being the foundation and supporting
your family.

Speaker 5 (14:19):
How did you do it?

Speaker 3 (14:21):
Trade offs and sacrifices. Look, it's it's not easy, and
it's not easy for the for the male, you know,
the father and the house. It's certainly not easy for
the female, you know, the woman in the house. I
was very blessed my wife gave up her career for
us to start a family, and she that's what she
wanted to do. I had frankly, the day that she
stopped working, she was making more money than I was making.

(14:42):
So all of a sudden, I felt the you know,
responsibility that fell on my shoulders. Just like, wait a minute,
we have you know, I had the NBA trained brain, right,
it's like, here's our revenue line, honey, hang on, and
you're gonna and we were giving up what she said, Okay,
I'm going to stop working so we can start a family.
It was like, wait a minute, there'll goes sixty percent
of our revenue line poof, because one like that, we're
gonna have kids. Also, the expenses just went like this,

(15:02):
The P and L in my head just exploded. Right,
It's like how is that going to work? So there
was a level of you know, burden and responsibility that
just got a little my shoulders. You got to accept
it and you got to go on with it, and
you have to realize that, hey, there is more to
it than just that P and L, and there's other dimensions.
And we wanted, we were committed to having a family.
So I was blessing that, you know, she she decided
to do it on her own. It was her prompting

(15:23):
at like I said, my initial reaction was, are you
sure you want to do that? She was an investment banker.
I was also self a marketing guy. Okay, so of
course you know the income levels where you can I
bank investors, sales and marketing. Right. So so we made
that commitment and we stalked to it, and that's what
enabled it. That was the enabler was Sarah agreeing to
focus on the family while I went ahead and agreed to,

(15:45):
you know, to be to carry that burden. The sacrifice
on her side, besides giving up her career was guess what,
you know, she's a Philly girl. Her entire world in
investment banking was between It wasn't the Northeast right New York.
We had lived in and outside of New York. We
had done all that. Now I was like, when the
burden falls for me, It's like my career was going
to take us to places that we never would have lived.
I want up being you know, the CEO in Kansas City, Missouri.

(16:08):
I wanted up being a CEO in shadow of North Carolina.
Those were not locations where you know, investment banking is,
you know, a prominent industry. Okay, so guess what things
work out in a way. You figure out a way
to American work out when your values are centered and
aligned and you're clear about what your objective is. The
equation between having the kids and having you know, twenty

(16:28):
thousand employees was also, you know, very much the same.
You're always making trade offs and you just have to
have a grounded set of values that allow you to
make those tradeoffs on the fly, because it's not like
you can sit down on a month and say, Okay,
this is the week that I'm going to have on Wednesday,
I'm going to be asked to make this trade offs
you need to make. You need to have those values
you know with you so that on the fly you
can make these decisions, what events you go to, what

(16:49):
events you miss. For example, you know, because of my
promotions and the way to move forward, required that I
move ahead of the family because we you know, the
code comes in from the boss, right, Hey, we need
you in whatever or the city you're going to be
living in. You got to go where the business needs it. Well,
you can't put the kids out of school, you know,
in the middle of the school year. So you got
to wait until the kids are done with the school

(17:09):
year and then move over the summer. We did that
half a dozen times, right, so you know, so you
it's a sacrifice. You got. Still, my boys play high
school football. I never missed a high school football game.
I made a commitment to say, you know what, I
may I'll be here on month Tuesday, Wednesday, but by god,
on Friday night and Saturday day when they played football,
I never missed the football game. We were a football family.

(17:30):
I was not gonna miss the football game. Now, that
required that I get on planes at midnight. I required
I get on planes at five in the morning. At
six in the morning from airports. You know, you sometimes
wonder what the heck am I doing here? That's what
you do because that's what it takes. Guess what, you know,
we had the resources to pay for the flight, and
you know, so you have to get up early, So
get up early. What's the problem. Yeah, loan doesn't work.
You know, to get on with it right.

Speaker 2 (17:51):
You know, over the span of your career, being able
to go from different industries, what was your greatest chess move.

Speaker 3 (17:58):
Greatest chess move probably living Starbucks and going to AMC
in the sense that you know, I had felt I
felt I loved I loved Seattle, I loved Starbucks. We
were you know, we had back back then, we had
Howard was the CEO. Was one of the times when
he was the CEO, and it was a great company
with a great mission. And I loved the product, and
I loved the company, and I loved the c the city,

(18:19):
everything about it. But I felt like I had trained
my entire life to be a CEO, and the opportunity
presented itself to go be a CEO on an industry
that I knew very little about. In fact, all I
knew was, you know, you go to the theater, you
watch a movie, you enjoyed. I was a movie goer.
I knew very little about the industry other than that,
and I knew that the company needed help, so, you know,
I the chess move was, you know, living someplace that

(18:42):
I was comfortable and that I had, you know, built
a layer of record of success that I couldn't stay
thatt for some years or instead, you know, take a
chance to move from Seattle to Kansas City live you know,
the coffee business that I knew really well. I was
getting to know really really really well and go to
a business that I knew very little about. So that
was a really key and a chess move that would
I would say that's one chess move. The first chess

(19:04):
move was, you know, living home Puerto Rico to go
to college in the States. Different language, different culture, different everything. Right,
I live in my friends, my parents behind and getting
on a plane and going to a city that I've
been in once in my life essentially to go look
at the college, to go live downtown. I used to
live in suburbia and now I'm going to be living downtown.
I used to live in Puerto Rico Spanish all the time.

(19:24):
You know, now I'm going to be living in these states. Right.
I understood the language. I knew it because I went
to a school that thought the subject matters in English,
even though the conversation was in Spanish. So you read
a book in English and the classes start in Spanish.
Figure that out. Okay, So I could read the book.
I knew I could read the book. When I got
to college, I used didn't know that if I if
I could talk to the professor or to my fellow students. Right,

(19:45):
But so that was one chess move.

Speaker 5 (19:47):
Wow, what is the hardest lesson that you learned?

Speaker 4 (19:52):
Like, because now you're coming into being a CEO of
a public company, Like, what is the hardest lesson that
you learned coming into.

Speaker 3 (20:01):
It takes a team. The loneliest feeling, in my opinion,
is when you achieve victory, When you achieve your objective
and you're running down the field and you get to
the end zone. Right, football families, I'm going to use
the football analogy. You get to the endzone, you turn around,
and the team that you play for, you play with,
is walking off the field. They're not coming to greet

(20:21):
you and hug you and salute you and celebrate with
you there instead of walking, you know, to the sideline.
That is the onliest feeling in the world. So you
have to make sure that if you are able to,
you know, get to the end zone, to the to
the goal line, you're the team that you that you're
working with is with you. So that's to me is
the most important thing is you get you know, the
most important lesson is you think you did it on
your own. Okay, no you did not. You did it

(20:43):
you had a team behind you. Now I don't know
that I had the entire family, the entire country. You know,
some people would like you to believe that you didn't
do that on your own. I like to think that
I'm pretty good at leading people, but I was not
the I T guy. I was definitely not the movie guy.
I had to learn a lot. Every industry that I
went to had to learn a lot. Okay, and you
learn that you need to bring people along. And I
my superpower, if I have one that I can claim

(21:03):
credit for, is that I could bring people along. I
could get people on line around an objective and I
could make it. I could make people feel like, hey,
we're in this together and we're part of a team.
And I did that in a couple of different ways.
You know. One is, you know, with compensation and equity,
and the other one is you know you involve people
in decision making, is like you know you can. I
can show up in the morning and you like to say, hey,
I got paid to make decisions. Okay, Like whenever we

(21:25):
go to dinner, for example, I'm the first guy to
order because the wairess is standing there, the waiters standing there, right,
and he's like, are you are you? You know, have
you decided? Like, honey, I get paid to make decisions.
That was one of my lines, right, And I do
I get paid to make decisions. I'm divorce. But you
cannot make all the decisions yourself. And you need to
enable people and empower people who make decisions on their own.
And you know what, you got to create an environment
that is okay to make some decisions that are not

(21:46):
going to work out. Not every decision I ever made,
or you know they don't work out, and you know
that something you know that's why basically give you three strikes,
right right, So yeah, so.

Speaker 1 (22:13):
We got a couple of shri your questions. Hopefully they're
not too stressful.

Speaker 3 (22:17):
It's a good thing. I watched Jopardy every.

Speaker 1 (22:19):
Night, DIAMDS Trivia, and then we'll go back to a
couple questions.

Speaker 2 (22:23):
Yeah, but first trivia question, which company became the first
to reach a one austrillion market cap? The first company
to reach one through your market cap? So here's options A, Microsoft, B, Amazon, C, Apple,
D Google.

Speaker 3 (22:38):
Oh it wasn't Google, I think you If it wasn't
in Vidia, then it was I'm going to say Microsoft.
Did I still get it wrong?

Speaker 5 (22:47):
See Apple?

Speaker 3 (22:48):
Apple? As we're all sitting here, we're our live phones.
So they were the first one. Yeah, Now who's the
highest market cap today? Though, I'm going to say it's
in media, probably because I think there were four for
a change.

Speaker 1 (23:02):
That's what I would assume, I think. So, you know,
the funny thing is they all these are always designed.

Speaker 3 (23:07):
The trick us. Yeah, well that's that's good to know.

Speaker 2 (23:11):
Roughly what percentage of small businesses fail within their first
five years A twenty percent, B thirty percent, C fifty
percent or D seventy percent seventy.

Speaker 5 (23:24):
I don't know, but that would be my guess.

Speaker 3 (23:27):
Fifty fifty fifty percent.

Speaker 1 (23:30):
I only means I know that stat.

Speaker 5 (23:32):
Seventy percent is restaurants.

Speaker 3 (23:33):
Oh okay, okay, see and I and I there's to
be a restaurant guy.

Speaker 2 (23:37):
Yeah, okay, restaurants have a high failure rate versus other
small businesses.

Speaker 1 (23:42):
I'll let you get the last question.

Speaker 4 (23:43):
Now, which entrepreneur famously said, your margin is my opportunity?
A Steve Jobs, B Jeff Bezos, three Elon Musk or
four Warm Buffett.

Speaker 2 (23:57):
I gotta go with a Queban guy Bessels. Right, Yeah, yep,
that sounds like Jeff. I didn't know Bezos is Cuban.
He's adopted, but his his parents were. I think that's
the story that he's adopted on his the adoptive parents,
adoptive parents who were given which is from here?

Speaker 3 (24:15):
It's Miami.

Speaker 1 (24:16):
He's from Miami.

Speaker 3 (24:17):
His damis his parents are here. I didn't know that either.

Speaker 1 (24:19):
I didn't know either.

Speaker 3 (24:20):
He just look it up.

Speaker 5 (24:22):
So that's so that's a that's a new trivia that
will happened.

Speaker 3 (24:25):
That networking thing. Okay, you just got to looking for
you to look out for the brothers man. His wife is,
she's from New Mexico. I think, Okay, her family is
lineage's Mexican, and I think and I think he's again,
Jeff is adopted. But I think I'm almost one hundred
percent sure that his adoptive parents are Cuban. Got it?

Speaker 1 (24:44):
That makes sense?

Speaker 2 (24:46):
Starting to come forward start now, you helped found Open
Road Films which want to ask her for spotlight.

Speaker 3 (24:53):
Yeah, that was fun.

Speaker 2 (24:55):
We're talking about Starbucks, AMC and Kansas City. Let's talk
about movies.

Speaker 3 (25:02):
Do you think.

Speaker 2 (25:03):
Movies still carry the same weight in today's environment like
what happened with movies?

Speaker 3 (25:08):
The movies do, absolutely, I mean we're still look at movies.
Movies still give us, you know, phrases and lines and behaviors.
You know that people imitate and talk about all the time.
So the content does the movies do? And we're still
you know, idolize you know, some of the some of
the artists on and so, some of the directors are
famous and they make a lot of money and so on.
So I believe the movies do. The difference is the

(25:29):
movie theater experience. That's the part that I'm afraid is
fading away, you know, And it's because it's become too convenient,
you know, to to enjoy the content elsewhere. And frankly,
there's so much competition for content, I mean, podcasts, movies, series,
you know, the old TV series and new TV series.
You know they used to be that assistant was you know,

(25:50):
twenty six episodes. Now a sism can be a shortest
eight episodes, right. I recently began to watch Scandal, Okay, man,
I lost a week of my life catching open Scandal
because they're up to like eight or nine seasons. Right.
But it's like it's Shonda Rhyme's like, you don't watch
this right now, Shandavers decides to make a movie, I'm watching,
I'll be the first one in line to watch anything
she makes. Okay. Yeah, So the level of content, the

(26:12):
quality of that content, it's going to continue to drive
that level of interest from the audience, I believe, and
that level of content, that quality of content is now
available in so many different platforms that you no longer
have to go just to the movie theater. Now, some
movies are made that you will never be able to
enjoy them in any other format of the movie theater. Right.
If you watch Inception, if you watch Top Gun two Maverick,

(26:32):
if you watch F one in a small skin, a
T in the phone, that's man, don't do that, that's murder.
That movie was not. I'll guarantee you no one worked
their ass off in that movie for you to watch
it on an iPhone. Sorry can cook, no way people make. Okay,
those guys made that movie for you to watch it
in a movie theater. Bigger than you know, bigger than
the than the living room in your house, you know,

(26:52):
bigger than life, and that that part of it continues
to be true. Unfortunately, there's only so many of those
made every year. They cost, you know, a couple of
one hundred million dollars to make, and it costs a
couple of hundred million dollars to launch into the marketplace.
So every time you see a movie like that, there's
three hundred, four hundred million dollars to get, you know,
put in play. Somebody's making a four hundred million dollar

(27:12):
bet to bring you that movie to go to the theater. Okay,
it's only the system can only produce so many of
those any giving year. And that's when the disconnect comes that,
you know, a system produces LUs be generous, a dozen
and a half of those movies a year. The theater
is open fifty two weeks a year, right, so it's
a weekend business. Right, you got fifty two weekends in
a year, but you only have twelve movies that merit

(27:33):
going to the theater, that's a problem. That's a disconnect.
Twelve weekends, twelve movies that you know merrit going to
the theater, and the theater's got to be open fifty
two weeks a year, that's a problem.

Speaker 4 (27:42):
Do you think that, I mean, I believe that the
movie theaters have continued to suffer in a post COVID environment.

Speaker 3 (27:51):
I think I don't know. I think you're right. The
box office is not recovered.

Speaker 4 (27:55):
Put it that way, Do you think that there will
ever be shift back to normalcy in that space?

Speaker 3 (28:04):
It may be?

Speaker 4 (28:04):
Is when I think, what do you think it would
take in order to get keep time?

Speaker 3 (28:08):
It'll take time. And the reason I, you know, I
remain hopeful that it will come back is because the
contentment continues to be relevant. Number number one. Number two.
If you're seven, something was true back then, that is
still still true today. If you're seventeen years old and
you have a date, because what is seventeen Hopefully seventeen
year olds of serving sit in dating right and there's
a lot of there's a lot of research that shows

(28:28):
that lately does not so much. But assuming that you're
seventeen years years old and you're interested in a day
where you're gonna go. You can't go to a bar.
You can't drink in most states, right, it's eighteen, eighteen
or twenty one. So if you're seventeen, then you're dating
somebody or you're gonna go. If you're a parent, where
do you want you're seventeen year old to go? Okay,
you don't want to go in to a bar or
you know, going to a club, not a seventeen it's

(28:49):
certainly not in some of these places in Miami Beach, right,
because that's nothing good happens, you know, after men night. Anyway.
I used to tell the investors, you know, picture two scenarios, right.
One scenario is in year old is getting ready to
leave the house on a Friday night, and he grabs
the keys, you know, out of the astray on the
way out of the door, and you go, yo, where
are you going to the movies? Okay? You immediately as

(29:11):
a parent, you immediately know kind of where the movies
are because every neighborhood in America has got a theater
that the kids go to, right, so you kind of
know where that theater is, so you know where he's
going or you know, for the moment he says, I'm
just going to the movies, right, you kind of know
when the movie begins because you can look it up
in your phone. You gonna know when he ends because
you know two and a half three hours later. You know,
maybe longer if it's a you know, the neuro movie
or something like that, but you know when the movie starts,
you kind of know when the movie ends. It's a

(29:32):
relatively safe environment in spite of some of the things
that have happened. You know, movie theaters are still relatively safe.
Is a control environment. So as a parent, you're feeling
pretty good about the fact that that the kid is, Oh,
he's driving a Keys to your Wife style right, and
it's going after the movies. That's a pretty good deal. Now,
second scenario, same kid, same settle keys right, graps is
going out of the house. Where you going? I don't know,
because we know that the standard answer of a seventeen

(29:54):
year old's mouth, it's I don't know, right, It's as
a parent, I'm not now I nervous. It's like, I
don't know. I means it's going to the street, some
sort of trouble is going to find that kid tonight, right, right, So,
so long as that's true, I think the movie theaters
have a chance, but it's going to take time to recover.
I think to your point, Travis, they have not come
back to the pre COVID level yet, in spite of
the fact that the movie theaters the tickets are more expensive.

(30:16):
I learned when I was in the business, right that
you needed you needed the continue the continuation of the movies, right,
not the seat puel so much, but you need it
to remind people that the movies are an option. So
when you went through like weeks with no good movies
coming out, it's like people forgot where the theater is.
And then you have one good movie that comes out,
and then all of a sudden, all of the subsequent
weekends were better, even though the content wasn't societly different,

(30:38):
but it's like you reminded people like, hey, you know what,
going to the theater is actually a pretty good deal
as entertainment goes. And then we try what we try
to do when I was at the MC is make
the experience they're going to the theater better, allow people
to reserve their seats so they know where they're going
to be seating, you know, make the food experience better. Well,
number one show time in a given day is seven pm.
Well what else happened at seven pm? Is dinner? Okay,
but it used to be in the movie theater. Did

(31:00):
it consisted of a hot dog and a tub of popcorn.
That's dinner. Give me a break man, right, So so
it's like, okay, so you as a moviegoer, got two options.
You can either have dinner or you can go to
the movies as a fusty and bargain pretending that we're
going to get people who are made food. But does
give me something a little bitter than a hot dog
and a tab of popcorn? Right? God forget given a burger,
giving a salad, you know, given something easy to cook

(31:22):
and easy to serve. But at least get people an
optional semblance of dinner. And that was, you know, trying
to get the experience sound, you know, focus on the
customer on the movie go or not so much on
the what's on the screen. Focusing on what's on the
screen is a studious job. Focusing on the movie gore
was the theater's job. And that's the part that I
think is faded and That's why I think the business
is still gonna have some tough times and hopefully it

(31:42):
will come back. It's part of the American fabric. Yeah, Okay,
no other country in the world do people go to
the movies as much as you go to in America. Wow.

Speaker 5 (31:52):
Very interesting.

Speaker 4 (31:53):
So I didn't realize that you actually took a mc public.

Speaker 3 (31:57):
Oh yes, so December thirteenth, twenty thirteen to be able decize.

Speaker 1 (32:01):
Wow.

Speaker 5 (32:02):
I'm sure today you'll remember many others.

Speaker 3 (32:04):
Right.

Speaker 4 (32:04):
So, Like my question to you is that is a
day that a lot of wealth was actually created where
a lot of your team, your stakeholder, your investors, et cetera.
Could you tell us what that experience was like doing
that for others or like helping that come to fruition
for others. And then I would love to understand the

(32:27):
different skills that it required you to tap into to
now be a public CEO versus a private CEO.

Speaker 3 (32:34):
That's a great, great question, Travis. I will tell you
a couple of things. Number One, taking the ability or
the privilege of taking a company through an IPO process,
it is the combination of a career is something that
you prepare for your entire life. It's a dream come
true because what you're doing is you're taking your work
and the work or your team and you're putting it
in front of people who pass judgment. And you know

(32:55):
when you go through the IPO and the IPOL is successful,
and essentially you're putting it in from people that are
passing judgment and are saying, hey, we like it, we were,
and we like it enough that we're going to put
our money to work with you. We're gonna trust you
with our money. And that is an ultimate expression of trust,
right or some high expression of trust. Anyway, there was
in many ways a combination of a career and kind
of a caps onto a to a career that you

(33:17):
know that I feel very privilege, you know, to have had.
It created a lot of wealth for the owners. We
were at that point owned by a Chinese company, Chinese
conglomer we at AMC. AMC had had a great history
but had fallen on a little bit of hard times
because he lost track of what was important. AMC had
become about monetizing the viewers, the people that came to

(33:37):
the theater, instead of being about the people that came
to the theater, not as not as dollar signs, but
as human beings. So you know, the the issue of
fed and dinner. Give them a chance to have dinner,
give a drink. Right, the industry had been had become paralyzed.
Nobody wanted to change change, scare everybody, right, So for example,
we couldn't we wouldn't serve beers because we were afraid

(33:58):
that all people won't buy coke. It's like, wait a minute,
why is coke haloe ninety two margin? Okay, to the
to the question about the margin. So nobody wanted to
mess with the concession stand. I came from the food
and beverage world, right, I was coming from Starbucks and
PepsiCo before that. So I get to the theater business,
and I'm like, the concession stan is first of all,
is so you make all your money because you don't
make any money show in the movie anyway. But why

(34:19):
are we limited to just popcorn and coke? And it's
because oh popkar haloice eighty eight margin and coke ala
k naty two margin. So nobody wanted to mess with
it as it selves's coke and popkin are not the
only things that have those kind of margins. In fact,
guess what we can sell many other things that have
equal it will car for example, beer. So I remember
going to my board and saying, I discovered that there's

(34:39):
one category that has as good a margin as cope.
And people are looking at me kind of in tredules, right,
It's like, really, smart guy, what is it? What is it?
And I went beer and being immediately people go, oh,
we should have thought of that. So it's one of
those ways, and it was laying right. It was obvious right.
Some people had begun doing it in very small scale.
We were the first ones to do it in a
major scale. But it's taking a chance and saying, you
know what, I'm going to think about this not as
a executive in the industry, but I'm gonna think about

(35:02):
it as a guy that goes to the movies. And
it's the ability to like, you know, we did something
very interesting. We put recliners in the movie theater. People
thought I was crazy, and the reason was, for years,
the rule of thumb in the industry was the way
you make money is by putting off a screen, and
then how many seats can you put in front of
that screen? And then how many screens can you put

(35:23):
in the building? And the economics of the business. The
entire economic equation of the industry was based on how
many screens you can put in the building, how many
seat you can put in front of every screen. And
here I comment, I say, okay, wait a minute. You
know what we're gonna do when they got all these
seats and we're gonna put the recliners. Here's the reality
of it. Every time you put in the recliner, in
order for the seat to recline, you got three roso
seats become one row seat. So from the get go

(35:44):
you take it. You know, two hundred year auditorium. Instead
of being two hundred seats, you only become sixty seats
with the recliners. Right, So that bad was that. Okay,
I'm gonna only have sixty seats, but I'm gonna turn
them over. I'm gonna have more people coming through those
sixty seats than I had coming through the two hundred seats.

Speaker 2 (36:00):
Right.

Speaker 3 (36:00):
Nobody believe that could happen, and say, well, you know what,
we own five hundred of these things. Let's try it out. Yeah,
so you tried in a couple and it works, and
then you go to the opposite end of the country.
And you try it again and it works again. So
now you're in two opposite ends of the country and
it works. Then you tried it in the middle of
the country, and guess what, it worked. So then you
try to you know, three or four different place. You
don't do five hundred tiers, you know, in two months. Right,

(36:22):
So you did it in a couple of places and
the work. You did it in a third, fourth, fifth
place in the world. And if we were it work. Oh,
by the way, because people are more comfortable. Guess what
they're doing. They're buying that beard, God bless them, right,
So guess what you cater into the consumer. The consumer
likes what you're doing. They'll respond with their money and
they respond with their behavior. And that's and that's how
you know, one thing led to the other, and that's
how we were able to create value and create wealth

(36:43):
in that environment. Was you know, we were able to
drive different behaviors from the consumer, and that gave us
the opportunity to create wealth. You know, we we had
a chance. Everybody had a chance to do it, and
we were the ones that took the risk. So the
wealth creation there was associated with risk and taking chances,
and it worked out pretty good.

Speaker 5 (36:58):
It's amazing.

Speaker 4 (37:00):
Yeah, I mean, as a moviegoer who appreciates the recliner
versus those other hard, little small seats.

Speaker 3 (37:06):
Thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. I mean, it's it's again.
It's one of those who were like, it was perfectly obvious,
and it was funny because I still remember to this
day the way that it happened. We were changing the
screen in one of my theaters in California, in Newport Beach,
I think it was, and I turn ended. You know,
in order to change the screen, you got to turn
the house lights on. We call him the house lights,
the lights in the auditorium. And I'm looking at the
guys changing the screen, and you know, I got a

(37:27):
couple of guys, you know, standing on the ladder up there,
and they're like literally changing the screen. And I turn
around and I look at the seats and the seats
were horrible, horrible. They were broken. There were stains in them.
And I turned to you know how, one of my
my development executives with me, right, and I turned great
guy Mark Right, and I said, Mark, what the look
at these seats, man, those chairs are pitiful. And he
looks at me he'd been in the business thirty seven years.

(37:48):
Mark Looks was, why do you think we keep the
lights down because we show who is Oh yeah, go
to We keep the lights down in the auditorium because
you know, we knew that the seats were broken, and
we knew that there was stands in the sea and
the fabric and stuff like that, and you know, after
a while you can't clean them en off. So we
kept the lights down so people wouldn't see it necessarily
how bad it was. And I'm like, okay, that is
gotta be one shitty proposition, right, so let's let's think

(38:12):
about it different. And it was Marked that came up
with it, said, you know, we need to think about
what if what if we put recliners in And I'm like, okay,
that's kind of crazy because she can't fit as many reclients.
So we got sits in here. But that was the
first thought of like, we need to think about it
totally differently. And we gave ourselves permission to fail because
we had tried it a couple of places and it
didn't work. It would have been like, you know, we've
had airing on our face. It's like, because you know,

(38:32):
nothing that you do. When you're the second largest player,
as we were back then, second largest chain in the country,
you do anything. Everything is publicized, everything is known by
everybody in the industry.

Speaker 1 (38:40):
Right.

Speaker 3 (38:40):
And when we did the first one, people were like,
you guys are crazy. Man, you don't know what you're doing.
You know, you new to this industry. You're gonna tank it.
I remember going to an industry reception and one of
the old times in the industry. Good guy, right, we
were having drink at the bar at midnight, right, Like
I said, nothing could happens after mina. Right, So he
comes over and puts his arm around and says, Jerry, listen,
we need to be a good, viable company. Please don't

(39:02):
screw it up. You know, be careful with this thing
you're doing. Taking seats out of an auditorium. Man. For years,
every the economics are based on how many seats are
infernal of that screen. And you're taking seats out. You're crazy.
And I'm like, watch, this is gonna work. George, I'll
never forget it. George was his name, George. I know
we're taking a chance here, but we're being very measured
and very thoughtful about it. And if it works, we're
all going to want to do this, And they say, great,

(39:24):
we're all going to have to spend more money in
the theater so we don't have to spend And I'm like, well,
that pressure you're gonna have to deal with. That that
I'm sorry to make your life difficult, but that you
will have to deal with. Yes, but it's a chance
that we took. We were very thoughtful and very measured
about it, and it worked. You know, people like it, right,
you like it?

Speaker 5 (39:39):
I love it.

Speaker 2 (39:40):
So many different careers are said, deffinitely, so many different industries,
and then eventually he turned into an investor.

Speaker 1 (39:46):
When she was your greatest ROI personally or personally.

Speaker 3 (39:51):
The movie the movie industry, the movie, the movie got
the theater industry because I was, you know, I called
myself the movie guy. I really wasn't. I wasn't making movies.
I wasn't shooting movies. I wasn't promoting movies. I was
showing movies. I was. I was an exhibitor to to
you know, to be precise, but it was. It was
the exhibitor I had. And the reason to say that
run is because I had. I feel like I had

(40:12):
the greatest impact there. I was the CEO, first time
being a CEO, and as a CEO, the decisions that
I made and my team and I made had brought impact.
Twenty thousand employees, five hundred theaters, et cetera, et cetera. Right,
so everywhere else, I had been one of one of
many guys. I was one of the executives. You know,
we had great success a Starbucks doing some of the
work that we were doing. I managed all of the

(40:33):
Starbucks businesses out side of the store, so great success.
Every time you grab a bottle from Puccino in the
convenience store, that was my business. Every Time you grab
a back of Starbucks coffee in the supermarket, that was
my business. If you bought that back of Starbucks coffee
in the store, that was the stores guys. But if
you bought that same bag of coffee at a local supermarket,
that was my business, right, So great business. And I
loved it, loved the coffee, loved the product, loved a

(40:53):
lot of things about it. But you know, my impact,
my ability to have impact was kind of limited. You know,
I was one I was you know, small call in
a big wheel. Yeah, as a CEO, AMC you know,
bigger impact, right, change the industry all of a sudden,
I'm putting the Clanders in and it forces everybody else
to react, and the consumer notices it, and the consumer
rewardss with behavior that they were not engaged in before.
So that's that's the reason I say that.

Speaker 4 (41:14):
I've heard somewhere that if you could do it all
over as as successful as as you've been, you would
join the military and you would become an entrepreneur.

Speaker 3 (41:25):
I have two regrets in my life. One is I
never served in the military. I have family members that
have I have not, and if I could do it
all over again, I probably I would choose the Navy,
to be honest, because I like the ocean. But that's
a personal preference. But I never served in the military,
and that is something that you know it would have been.
You know, you have to dedicate. That's not something you

(41:45):
do for six months and get out right. You got
to do that for you know, a ten, twelve, four
to whatever. You know, it's a stretch and I never
I never focused on that enough to give it a
the you know, a good eighten or twelve year stretch.
So I have that regret. And then second, I was
always too risk as risk, yes, as I was risk lugging,
as I was with some jobs and you know, making
some of the chess moves that we talked about earlier.

(42:06):
I was always scared of you know, that financial stability.
And you know, so I was always a W two guy.
I was always an employee. I was never an owner.
I was never an entrepreneur. And now that I've seen
you know, having spent four years in venture capital, now
that I've seen the entrepreneur site, I wish that I
had taken the chance at some at some point in time.
I wish I had had the financial stability behind me
so I didn't have to worry about the kids college

(42:27):
education or the mortgage or anything like that. And if
I had that stability behind me, I probably would have
been an entrepreneur somewhere along the line. Because I love
small business. I love the ability to have impact, and
that's what today I'm still engaging, you know, in corporate
America with you know, bord of directors and you know,
some big companies, but I also work with private equity
in some smaller companies because I just like the ability
to have you know, your advice, CEO, your advisory owner

(42:48):
or the son of an owner or the daughter of
an owner. Right, And you can see the impact and
people and on the businesses right away. It's not in
big companies. You have an idea, now you gotta test,
you gotta stress test, you got to do this, you
gotta seine answer, you got to all other things. Thanks
for a while, you have to have it. They let
your people, you know, reacting in a certain way in
order to get something done. In a small business, you
think about it in the morning, you're doing it in
the afternoon. And I like that immediately about it.

Speaker 4 (43:11):
I think it's pretty cool though, that you were able
to obtain the level of success that you did as
a W two right, because I think too often the
narrative in today's you know landscape is that you can't
make money unless you're an entrepreneur, right, and that everyone
has to be their own boss. You got to be
the CEO of something, even if it's worth nothing. And

(43:33):
it's it's like, it's like what kind of gives? And
I think it's important that people see examples of people
like yourself who've been able to want to have such
an impact across multiple industries create wealth for themselves also
create wealth for others. And you've been able to have
a very similar type of impact doing it in a
different way. And there's more more than one way it's

(43:54):
gonna cut.

Speaker 3 (43:54):
There's absolutely more than one way it's gonna cut. And
well you have to do is you have to stay
true to what works for you and maximize the opportunities
that are presented you. You can spend your entire life
thinking about the opportunities that could have been, should have been,
it might have been, or you can act on the
ones that are in front of you. And if you
keep focusing on the ones that could I should have
might have, man, you forget about the ones that are
in front of you and the ones in front of you,
the ones that are to pay off that I don't
know either you ask about it only comes from the

(44:15):
ones that in front of you, and you act on,
you know, complaining and you know, bitching about what Kuda
should or might have. You know, good luck, I mean,
you're free to do it. It's a free country. You're
free to do it. But good luck to you. Right,
the ones that are in front of you are the
ones that are going to make a difference. And you
got to choose to make a difference or not. And
if you use to make a difference, you act and
react to the ones that are in front of you.

Speaker 1 (44:34):
I think that's an incredible note to leave us on.
I have a thousand questions.

Speaker 2 (44:39):
We have a lot of viewers who may be working
in corporate America, may be an entrepreneur, whether they're they're
they're working a job. You know, when do they leave
when they try to get the promotion? When do they
start a business? You figured out when to make good
decisions the same, at least in.

Speaker 3 (44:59):
General, that we're not always good decisions. You know, some
don't always work out, but you gotta Do's the chance
you gotta take. You know. I used to belong to
a group in New York that would organize his lunches
and these activities. And one day, for some reason, I
wound up. I was lucky enough to wind up sitting
for lunch next to an old guy called name Jack Welsh.
I don't know if you I'm dating myself, right Jack?

(45:21):
You know, I think he's now passed. Right, Jack was
all back then, and I'm talking twenty five years ago.
And Jack made an interesting coming that day. He made
this It was on the topic of work life balance,
and like Jack's point was, there is no work life balance.
There's work life trade offs and you gotta make it.
You got to decide. You got to make that trade
off right when the company calls. Right, the joke used
to be company calls and the first call is like, hey,

(45:43):
how you doing. You know, good news, you promote it.
Bad news, you promote it. Because the bad news is
that means you got to open with your family and move,
you know, across the country, across the state or someplace. Elf.
You gotta sell the house. You got to You gotta
go home and tell the wife, you got to go
home and tell the kids. Right, So the good news
is you get in promotion. The bad news is you're moving.
So it's like that's a trade off, right if we
if we had chosen to, like if I chosen to

(46:05):
not move. You know, when my wife, my wife said
we're going to start a family, I'm gonna quit my
career and we're gonna I'm gonna focus on the kids
and you can focus on the work. Right, that was
the trade off that she made and Tangadi, you know
she made it and worked out. Now you know we're
blessed with you know, two kids, and you know, and
everything is good. But in the moment, it was like,
whoa man, Wait a minute, and literally, I mean my brain,
you know that NBA trained brain went right to the piano,

(46:27):
was like, wait, revenue, this expenses up? How is this house?
Is a good idea, right, But as a trade off
you make you want a family or not. We both
came from you know, good families, and family meant a
lot to her, it meant a lot to me. So
starting a family was never of course, we're gonna have kids.
Of course we're not. That wasn't even a question. It
was a matter of when. So you know, it's a
trade off that we made, and that was to us.

(46:49):
I was the thing. It was. We made a trade off,
and we made sacrifices along the way. You know, I
moved to Seattle before she moved to Seattle. You know,
we it got to the when the kids got to
be fifth sixth grade, that's when we decided that's enough.
We decided to keep them stable in one location. Happened
to have been in Michigan. So I got wanted it's
a Michigan fan wand that it's a Michigan State fan,
which makes for very interesting weekends, okay when the big

(47:10):
tennis played. So hey, it is what it is, right.
But I moved to Seattle, and they stayed in Michigan
because us we had them in a school that they
loved and that she was very comfortable in and they
were very comfortable in. So it was a great environment
for them. So I went and took a risk, you know,
and moved halfways across the country, you know, from Detroit
to Seattle, and they stayed behind. And that was a

(47:30):
five year stretch where I was, you know, halfways across
the country making the football games on Friday night and Saturday.
That was tough because now you're flying four hours to
do it, Okay, But it was one of those who
are like, hey, Starbucks was a great outfit, right, and
a great opportunity to go lead this big piece of
business for them that needed help. So I felt I
could have impact doing that. And oh, by the way,
it's a great company, you know, it's a resume builder

(47:51):
and it's going to open up doors down the line.
I never would have been the COAMC without having been
a city vice president at Starbucks, right, And you get
to work for great people like Howard Charles and Jim Donald.
So you know, so that was worth it. But the
sacrifice they put pro cords. Oh yeah, by the way,
you're gonna leave in Seattle by yourself during the week
and then come home, you know, rush home on Thursday
night or Friday morning in order to make their Friday

(48:12):
night weekend, you know, football game.

Speaker 2 (48:14):
That's a great note. So guys, there's no work life
balance and it's a rap. And this is Wealth Break.

Speaker 3 (48:25):
Thank you, Jerry, thank you, Thank you for coming to Miami.

Speaker 5 (48:28):
Thank you's happy to be here.

Speaker 3 (48:29):
Appreciate it all right.

Speaker 1 (48:34):
Thanks for listening everyone.

Speaker 2 (48:36):
The hosts of The Wealth Break are Me, Rodney Williams,
and Travis Holloway.

Speaker 1 (48:41):
If you want to stay connected, follow.

Speaker 2 (48:43):
Us at the Wealth Break on all platforms, and be
sure to visit the Wealth Break dot com for additional
resources to help you on your journey to building well.
Our executive producers are Ryan Marx and Malik Soka, with
Meredith Barnes as our supervisor producer.

Speaker 1 (49:01):
Catch you next time on the Welk Break.