April 8, 2025 • 39 mins
What are your core values as a leader? Reflect on your answer and join Louie Sharp – international speaker, best-selling author, and accelerated business growth consultant – and Bruce Cameron as they discuss selling, team building, and core values.
Bruce details his extensive career journey starting as an engineer before transitioning into sales and leadership roles. Now in his retirement and owner of Vintage Swing Band, he shares this profound leadership lesson: the character of any individual is critical. Empathy, teamwork, and personal growth are key over mere skill proficiency.
Louie’s Leadership & Love Nugs (podcast time stamps)
- Be cognizant of the challenges associated with ego control (11:00)
- Identify and quickly remove toxic team members to protect organization culture (13:30)
- Understand team members' personal goals and five-year plans (19:36)
- Create safe environments for team members to voice opinions (29:29)
- Maintain confidentiality when team members share personal information (28:55)
- Implement regular feedback sessions with team members (26:59)
#sales #vertical selling #empathy #teamwork #personalgrowth #LeadershipandLove #Thegiftedleader #LouieSharp #Podcast
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Welcome to the Leadership and Love Podcast.
We will cover leadership, mindset, personal development,
and sales and marketing.
You'll experience thought-provoking conversations with both
nationally and internationally recognized leaders.
Our goal is to inspire you and deliver actionable items
that you can implement that will help you accelerate your
(00:22):
growth.
Get ready to discover the magic and the power when you lead
with love.
I'm very, very excited today.
I've got not only a dear friend, but also my boss,
Bruce Cameron here.
Bruce Cameron is currently retired,
and we're going to get to that in a second.
(00:44):
But in his retirement, he's started,
and you might have started it before you retired, Bruce,
but he started a thing called the Vintage Swing Band,
kind of as a side project hobby in his basement that's
turned into just a really going turn.
And can you tell the audience just a brief kind of
(01:04):
background of what you did and how long you were doing it?
Sure. So I, uh, I went to engineering school.
I don't exactly know why.
I was really good at mechanical drafting, uh, in
high school mechanical engineering kind of sounded like
that.
I was good in math.
So I got into a decent engineering school.
I was in a five-year, co-op work study program.
(01:27):
And unfortunately there was, there was no, uh,
sales programs in, uh, in engineering.
So I graduated, uh, uh, engineering school.
I immediately went for my MBA,
and I started moving around. In the computer world,
back in the late mid to late seventies, early eighties,
you went with the way. What was the product? Was it
(01:47):
business software? Then,
it turned out to be engineering software.
Then it turned out to be a manufacturing software.
I did a lot with robotic software back in the aerospace
days, back in the eighties.
And then where should you live to sell this kind of stuff?
Well, I lived in LA and that was all aerospace.
I lived in Dallas.
That was all oil and chemical.
(02:08):
I lived in Cincinnati.
And, uh,
unfortunately that was too small a city to have a lot of
companies that I wanted to work for.
So we moved to Chicago, which is very diverse, and for me,
uh, was the right place for me to be,
although I'm a New Yorker and, uh,
never really thought much of Chicago,
but as far as a career,
(02:28):
international companies set their headquarters up in
Chicago.
Chicago is the center of attention and for U.S.
based companies, this kind of thing.
And, uh, I've been able to change jobs.
Um, sometimes when I knew it wasn't the right job,
I changed pretty quickly, but I had two really good runs.
Each was about eight or nine years.
Did a lot of hiring of salespeople.
(02:50):
The other thing that, uh,
that probably is my claim to fame,
I'm a big fan of vertical selling.
What is that?
I don't want to be everything to everybody.
I want my sales force to be experts in certain industries
that my customers are in. The industries we had chosen
were, um, service management companies that, uh,
(03:12):
service product, uh, or apparel.
Uh, most people that are selling into, uh, uh,
stores and manufacturing companies,
everything is SKU based.
Well, apparel is not skew base.
So you have your size, your color,
your style of the product.
No software back in those days could do it.
I'm competing against SAP and Oracle, some of the big guys.
(03:35):
And, uh, I had a development group in Chicago, um, that,
that, uh, we developed a lot of, uh,
the software extensions for this stuff.
And, uh, and then I would just give it to, uh,
to my partners, uh,
as far as their ability to sell the product,
but we do the documentation.
So we sell our core product, but vertical selling, uh,
(03:57):
as far as developing your, um,
relationship with your customer.
So you can talk to our, our, uh,
our beta customer in apparel was Jockey menswear.
We had a team that went in there and understood their
business and how they account,
what kind of margins they get, and this kind of stuff.
So we had about five different verticals.
(04:19):
It really distinguished us from, from the pack.
So the, to me,
the ability for a company to really know what they're good
at.
And then focus on that and then just stay with your
knitting.
Talk to customers, prospects in that area in, uh,
that want that kind of product.
(04:40):
They're going to get so much more trusting of you, uh,
because you're talking their, their language.
Uh, and you understand what they're going through.
And my home company at JBA, uh, was in the UK,
and UK did not like all the development we're doing because
they, they had to develop in the UK.
That's just the way they were.
(05:01):
But, uh, there was some,
some major differences with the user interface between the
UK.
The languages are different and, um, but, uh,
they started understanding what we were doing and, uh,
it got copied all over the world.
And, uh, so most of the...
I'm sorry to interrupt, Bruce,
but what were you doing that got copied around the world?
(05:23):
Uh, so I would develop apparel software.
We'd package it up and then all my,
the other regions for that company.
Uh, they'd say, Kate,
come to Chicago and we'll get you trained up.
And literally we got, uh, we were in essence,
the product development group for these vertical
industries.
(05:43):
So when I say we give it around the world,
I'm saying we'd give it to all the other divisions of my
company to expand their product offer.
Right, and when you say...
and I want to be clear for our audience when you're talking
about vertical that in my...
in my world that's niche a niche market.
Right. Correct.
You're talking about exactly your vertical is the same
(06:05):
thing as a niche market
Exactly.
And it's funny when you learn some basic things early on in
one's career, whether you retire or it's 30 years later,
you'll go back to those basics.
It's hard to keep the newness, if you will,
after about five, six, seven, eight years.
(06:26):
In fact, our band,
we're going on our sixth year at this point in time.
And, you know, I'm looking,
how can we breathe new life in this?
In fact, we've started a smaller band called, The Combo.
And we're expanding instead of 20s to 40s,
we're going 40s to 70s and try to get a new niche and
(06:46):
create differentiation between the two bands and things of
that sort.
So I'm, you know, if I had to define my career,
my leadership style is kind of soft spoken.
I'm six foot eight back in the day.
So I didn't need to be a big loud mouth.
(07:08):
And usually I'm not...
there are times when if somebody's just not treating us,
or, or whatever fairly, you know,
it's always good to have a temper when you need it.
But to me,
the most important thing is to get to know my people. In
sales organization,
the other term I used as a poster child,
(07:28):
you got to find that guy that's going to break the bank.
Because that's the guy that you want your new guys
interviewing with.
Because if he can break the bank,
and I got a similar background to him,
I can break the bank kind of thing. My sales organization,
the largest was about 100 guys. It's important to hire that
(07:49):
first person that's just gonna do extremely well.
And sometimes,
sometimes with that person doesn't come all the other
qualities you might be looking at.
It's tough on a sales organization,
because it's really easy to define what they're interested
in, it's money, you know, pure and simple.
(08:11):
Now in a band, we we, uh, the little bit we pay,
where people are not coming to band practice every other
week and doing 15 to 20 gigs for anything other than pure
enjoyment of music. It's a volunteer situation.
And they're managed differently.
And it's up to us to determine, you know,
(08:35):
what's the expectation?
We've actually, we have a leadership team.
I have an organization structure in the band that people
look at me like, what are you talking about?
I actually don't even play much in my own band. I'm more of
the kind of the leader of I do the contracts and,
and a lot of that and the recruiting, that kind of stuff.
(08:57):
But, you know, it's important that each leader has six,
seven, eight guys.
Because if you have more than that,
it's hard to really get to know,
know somebody and know what's going to make them tick and
this kind of stuff.
And, you know, when you got some of your top guys,
you don't want to get too far away from them.
The other thing that I think is extremely important,
(09:19):
certainly in the sales organization,
I wanted to be that sales guy, the sales leader,
the general manager, the president, that the cut,
that my guys were very, very comfortable bringing me in.
I don't want to be on center stage.
I want my guys to be on center stage.
(09:40):
I consider myself one of the best sales guys I'd ever met.
But I made a lot more money when I had a lot of sales guys
reporting to me doing extremely well.
And it, you know, it was about 29, 30 years old.
I'm kind of thinking, man, these other guys I'm with,
and some of our partners and Microsoft and some of them,
(10:01):
like, they're doubling what I make.
What the heck is going on here?
And being the best sales guy, to me,
is not near as important as being the best leader and
finding the right guys of character.
I don't care how good a musician or how good a salesman
they are.
When they turn cancerous, you're not going to fix it.
(10:22):
You don't have the time,
and you're going to lose other people along the way.
And we've had a couple situations like that in the band and
any organization.
But it comes down to, you know,
just really paying attention to the people aspects of any
business to understand what's going on.
(10:45):
I had one of the things I like when I hire a top notch
sales guy,
I asked him to write down the biggest W-2 that they've ever
had.
And they put in a piece of paper and I say, okay,
this is our goal.
We got to beat this together.
And, uh, I had one organization, uh,
and I was still pretty young as a manager,
as in mid thirties.
(11:06):
I had some guys pulling down seven, 800 grand.
And, uh, the other part of this is ego control.
I had no idea.
I thought all these guys wanted to make a lot of money.
No, well, that wasn't exactly true.
They didn't know what to do with a lot of money.
So they started, uh, uh,
stepping out on their families and their wives and their
(11:26):
drinking and their gambling.
And I'm like, what the heck is going on?
And, uh, and I actually, uh,
did a lot of studies on ego control because that, you know,
there's not the worst in building a tremendous
organization.
And I looked at like the,
the one year the Bears won it all.
That was, that was the last time they won.
I think it was in 85.
(11:47):
And I think a lot of it was those guys,
they got out of their egos, got out of control.
And, uh, you look at the great, great teams,
like a Green Bay under Lombardi and, uh, and some of those,
uh, Bellichek's teams,
they don't even have their names on their, on their back.
Everybody is an equal.
Um, the team is as good as the weakest link.
And I firmly believe in that, that, uh, you know,
(12:09):
you gotta, if you're going to be a team for the longterm,
and again, longterm in these days is five, six years,
but not a one hit wonder.
Um, it's extremely important that you build up the ego,
but you don't get, let the ego get out of control.
That's interesting.
I've recently been watching some highlights of the 85
(12:31):
Bears.
It's funny that you bring that up.
And one of the things that I noticed is,
it didn't matter who made a play.
Everybody surrounded that player and congratulated them.
Right.
And they were all, to your point, they didn't have...
they were proud of what they were doing together.
They weren't, it wasn't all about me, me, me.
And that ego,
(12:52):
you've got some great wisdom in what you've been talking
about, because there is a fine line.
We want to build people up,
but we don't want to get so egotistical that they think we
can't live without them.
Because nothing's further from the truth,
anybody can be replaced.
One of the other things I thought that was very powerful
that you touched on was the fact that once they had that
(13:16):
fame and fortune, if you will,
they didn't know how to handle it. Right?
And that power and fame went to their head.
And it's much like a rock star, right?
or great musicians that get there,
but they don't know what to do with it.
And they turn to the, like you said,
they step out on their wives.
Excuse me, they turn to alcohol or drugs,
those kinds of things.
(13:37):
And then the whole thing goes off the rail and it really
literally implodes.
I'd also like to say that I've done some leadership where
I've gone into teams like for other companies.
And it's amazing to me how one person can suck an
organization down.
That one bad apple can suck a whole organization down.
(14:00):
It's incredible.
And you're right.
Again, you had a bunch of golden nuggets in there, Bruce.
And one of them is that once you've identified that person,
you've got to get them out of the organization as quick as
possible,
because they're going to take good people down with them if
not the whole organization or that whole department.
There's no question that.
You and I have had some very,
(14:23):
I'll call enlightening conversations over the last couple
of years since I've been privileged to join the band.
And you said something about the caliber of the person
being more important to you than their skills.
I'd like you to talk about that to our audience to get us
going right off the bat,
(14:44):
so that they have an understanding of what you mean by
that.
Sure.
So, you know, when you're building an organization,
whether it be a sales organization or a band or raising
four sons,
you you want to instill or find people of character.
(15:04):
And what that means in my mind is somebody that always kind
of thinks in terms of a whole piece, the whole band,
the whole organization,
as opposed to just their personal success,
someone that has empathy, not only for their whole worker,
(15:25):
but in my mind,
the most important empathy anybody has is for the
customer.
Understanding what the customer wants.
It doesn't really matter what you're selling.
Sometimes the leader, his customer is subordinate.
But you know,
I look for that person that's going to fit the
organization.
(15:45):
And then hopefully, in a band,
they're also a very good musician.
You, as an example of this,
came into a jazz band with not a lot of jazz experience.
But the type of person you were,
and there's a couple other guys in the band like this,
(16:07):
did not want to be the weak link in the organization.
And you work very, very hard.
And the neat thing was, as you were getting better,
everybody felt that they needed to get better.
Even though a lot of the guys were really good musicians,
because it's that...
(16:28):
it's that character of Louis Sharp and other people,
that kind of move the organization ahead to the next level.
And that's what I mean, when I talk about character.
I have four sons, I talked about them.
Obviously, I didn't hire my sons,
but the oldest son had to set the stage, He had to be that,
(16:50):
that person that, that, in essence, was the leader.
I was the oldest in my family.
I have three siblings.
And although they live back in New York,
they know that I've always operate in the best interests of
the family, or the organization, or whatever.
So when I when I talk about that, when I interview people,
(17:12):
and that's not to say I always get it right,
but that's probably in my mind,
the most important asset is the character of the person,
their work ethic,
their ability to be part of a team and understand what that
means.
And also help, help me. You know, this organization,
(17:34):
the band is much further along than my original thought
process as to what it was going to be and that kind of
stuff.
And I need future thinkers.
And there's nobody better that came into a band that didn't
even really play the same music that we were playing.
And, and got through that hurdle,
(17:54):
but helped me a lot to get myself and the band to the next
hurdle.
There's three or four people in the band that I call them
the glue.
None of my glues are my best musicians.
But they're the guys that basically keep keep us
comfortable.
They're loving what they do.
They know that they can speak up and, and say their piece.
(18:17):
They come here for two hours every two weeks really as it's
almost like a breath of fresh air to get out of the world.
Some of us are retired.
A lot of us, they come to this for those two hours,
make great music together,
and know that they're going to feel good during the
(18:38):
process.
So you touched on something that I think is truly golden
nugget, Bruce.
I'd like you to talk a little bit more about that.
And that is that sometimes as a leader,
your number one client are the people under you.
Can you help our audience understand what you mean by that?
So my whole life I've been selling what I would call
(18:59):
continuous improvement,
happens to be the product of software,
but we're trying to make our clients better and better. A
nd,
one of the first things I do with a client is I truly try
to understand what their goals are,
where they want to be five years from now,
what their expectations are and things of that sort.
To me,
that's the exact same interview I'm going to have with a
(19:21):
client, with a prospective employee.
What is your goal?
You know, so many people,
you ask them for their five-year goals and they have no
idea that they're in their minds to start a job,
and I don't want someone starting a job.
I want someone that's going to be part of my team for a
minimum of five years and that we're going to do a lot of
(19:42):
building together. And, you know,
a lot of people just don't think that way and the other
thing I do very, very different than most,
which I think is incredibly important, o
nce I tell people my five-year goal, then
I work backwards from this is where I want to get to and
(20:02):
these are the steps I got to go through.
To me, the same thing with managing a sales organization.
The final step in my mind is who signs their purchase
order?
When can that happen?
Does he have the authority?
I could care less about the demos and how many sales calls
and how many lunches and gosh,
I got to play golf with them and all this kind of stuff.
(20:24):
Tell me what that last meeting looks like.
And it's almost like in our band,
help me understand what is the audience going to feel when
they hear this song and it's finally done perfectly at that
point in time.
We had a Christmas concert, and we worked on a song,
Hark the Herald Angels Sing.
(20:46):
Uh,
it's probably was written by one of the toughest arrangers.
His name is Gordon Goodwin.
Probably a bit beyond our band.
Uh, but each year we took it out,
we played it a couple more times,
but we knew it wasn't ready for prime time and, uh,
we put it back and obviously for Christmas music,
we're not practicing it all that often, but this,
(21:07):
this past year, after four years, we had the right band,
we had the right, uh, temperament,
we had the right musicians and, uh,
we performed it at all three gigs, and it went real well.
So sometimes, uh,
you gotta have the patience to grow whatever you're trying
to grow, but to me, it's very,
(21:30):
very important to know what the end game looks like. T
here's too many people that, uh,
they talk about the process and, uh, you know,
when you're paying for a sales organization,
some of the deals that I had to source,
I'd be putting out a couple hundred grand, uh,
as I'd had development people there and engineering and
salespeople and we're flying all over the world and all
(21:52):
this kind of stuff.
And, uh, you know, when I look at it at any salesman,
the best, the second best, uh,
thing to do in any kind of deal is pull out early if you
know, you're not going to win.
So typically, you know, you're not going to win.
If you can't picture what that last meeting was going to
look like, who signs, where is it going to be signed?
(22:15):
You know,
a lot of times you're trying to get year end business.
And, uh, I hear invariably,
are you sure the guy's going to be in the office between
Christmas and New Year's?
And, uh, geez, I never thought of that.
You know, a lot of guys take vacation then.
That's the guy that's going to sign.
You better, you better start saying, Hey,
I'll be there on December 30th.
(22:36):
I've missed a lot of New Year's Eves.
Uh, I missed a lot of birthdays.
I've missed a lot of anniversaries.
My wife understood that.
I was lucky enough to retire at 59.
But, uh, to me, uh,
it's extremely important to be where you need to be to give
the customer the best possible service.
I love what you're talking about here because it's so
(22:58):
powerful.
We had a deal down in, uh, for the band down in Navy Pier.
I know, you know, well, um, uh, I doubled our, uh,
highest rate we've ever charged, uh,
the person there jumped on it.
I'm like, jeez, I came in too, too low.
One of the challenges I got in the band there,
there's no price leader out there.
(23:19):
I have no idea what, what we can charge.
And it turns out our band is probably getting more money
than, uh,
there's about four or five other bands that I know them
well enough.
They were comparing notes, but, uh, here we're going in,
making all this money and, uh, and this kind of thing.
We're playing a Navy Pier, you know, how,
how it's gotta be our best gig and, uh,
a lot of fun and they're doing a fundraising and that's a
(23:42):
$500 a plate dinner and all of this stuff.
I didn't ask the right questions.
And what's funny was I asked the band, i
f we could go and do that exact same gig for the same
amount of money, maybe even a bit more money,
would you want to do it?
And invariably the band said, no, it wasn't fun.
(24:02):
It wasn't fun for the band.
Uh, we did a lot of, uh, uh, rehearsal, not,
not band rehearsal.
We were rehearsing, uh, some of the skits they were doing.
We didn't know about that.
Uh,
there's a whole bunch of stuff that we've kind of got off
course.
So you gotta be very, very careful.
Even, even myself as a leader kind of got wrapped up into,
(24:23):
Oh, Navy Pier.
And we're making more money than we've ever made and all
that kind of stuff.
If my band's not having fun,
they're not going to drive an hour to rehearsal.
Um, there there's just not enough money in, uh,
in this kind of stuff.
And I think that's the same way for, uh,
for sales organization.
It's gotta be fun.
(24:44):
And, uh, you know, it sometimes, even as a leader,
you got to get wrapped up in your own success.
And, uh, uh, you know, that's when I needed a boss.
And unfortunately, by the time he got to me, uh,
cause he was an IBMer, and he was very, very successful.
It was almost too late because, uh,
marriages started breaking up and, uh,
(25:06):
they used to call me Oprah Bruce because I had nine or 10
marital situations out of, out of about 150.
That even wives were asking to make an appointment to see
me.
And I'm like, I'm an engineer.
I don't understand this,
but it really made me appreciate this.
This ego thing is extremely important.
And he can't think he's better than his family.
(25:29):
Sometimes their own marriages are important.
A lot of times if I ever get the opportunity,
I like to meet the other half of the relationship.
I don't need to be the wife or a girlfriend or could be a
mother or how is the kid raised, especially with the band,
uh, two is we're all very,
very honest with each other about states of deal,
(25:51):
states of, uh, the music, uh,
states of our family and those kinds of things.
And, uh, uh, you know, it,
sometimes it's hard to be brutally honest with oneself as
to what we need to do.
Yeah, that's it.
You've touched on a couple of things there that I think are
really important.
One is, I think, great leaders,
and I consider you a great leader.
(26:12):
Great leaders go out and ask the team, hey,
how's it going?
How did you like that gig?
And for those of you that are listening that aren't
familiar, Navy Pier is a big deal in Chicago.
It's a, it's a, there's a thing called Navy Pier.
There's a bunch of things on there at the very end of it.
It's this big, huge ballroom.
So that's what Bruce was referring to at Navy Pier.
(26:33):
But you, the point that you made in that,
when you went back and asked the band, hey,
would you do that gig again?
That was, you're right.
There was just for the, as a member of the band,
that perspective on that, it was just way too much time,
way too much time to pull that gig off,
way too much hassle logistically with parking and trying to
get in the venue and out of the venue and that whole
(26:53):
shebang.
And it ended up being an all day sucker, right?
For the entire band.
That was an all day sucker.
The other thing that you touched on that I think is really
powerful.
And if you guys haven't got caught this,
I want you to re-listen to what Bruce has been talking
about.
Because what he's talked about is what he learned in his
life early in his career,
he's used all through his life in relationships,
(27:15):
in leading a band, in his retirement, these basic skills,
the basics he called them,
that you go back to work all the time.
And he, I think he's being very modest and humble.
When you talk about ego, I think you'd be,
you're being very modest and humble, Bruce,
because people were seeking him out for marriage counseling
because he's got these leadership skills and the ability to
(27:38):
communicate.
And so he could communicate with his team.
He said something else that was very important.
I don't want you to let go by.
He made it a safe environment for people to voice their
opinion.
I've watched him do that plenty of times.
I can tell you that I also watched him raise his voice at
somebody when we had a band gig outside on a big trailer
(27:58):
and somebody,
the band that was going to play after started putting their
speakers in front of his trombone players and the saxophone
players.
And it's the only time I ever heard Bruce raise his voice.
But so there are times when you need to use that authority,
but it's very rare.
And I want to talk, I want you to talk about something,
Bruce, that you mentioned.
What did you do to build that relationship with your
(28:22):
employees and know about them?
Well, it's,
it's hard to build a relationship unless you got the
opportunity to spend some one-on-one time with them and
just talk and get them to talk.
And, uh, your best leaders are your best listeners.
And sometimes I can, uh,
gab a little bit more than I need to.
I, I've been told on the front end of the band that I,
(28:44):
I talk too much and I'm trying to hold it back a little bit
and I, and I get that. And I've, uh,
we've been to a couple of different bands where it's been
very successful and that kind of stuff.
But, uh, no, I, I,
I think people got to appreciate the fact.
Number one, a lot of, a lot of someone,
people that are going to tell you stuff, they don't,
(29:06):
they want it held in confidence.
They got to be able to trust me that I'm not going to go
around and say, jeez, this guy, uh, uh, you know,
doesn't particularly like, uh,
these other three players and this kind of thing.
Uh, now that's not to say sometimes, uh, uh, you know,
you just gotta be very,
very tactful as far as conveying information to other
(29:29):
people.
There's, uh, uh,
there's some people in any organization that, uh,
that are loud mouth and are exaggerators and, uh, you know,
they, they, they'll take what you say,
and then all of a sudden it's blown out proportion and, uh,
uh, you know, you don't,
you don't fail somebody more than once, as far as, uh,
(29:52):
losing their confidence in, in you, me, um,
they're just not going to give you that opportunity.
So you got to,
you got to know kind of when to fold them and when to hold
them kind of stuff as far as information.
Um, I, I like to, we, we have kids in our band, uh,
sophomores in high schools.
(30:12):
And, uh, we've, it was about three of us in our seventies.
Um, but everybody's there kind of for the same reason.
They want to make great music together.
They want to grow together.
I've got a couple of kids that are just extremely good
musicians and, uh, they kind of inspire the band that, uh,
you know, to be around young kids like this that are, uh,
(30:34):
really loving the music, uh, and that kind of stuff.
So I, you know, for me,
I coached probably over 800 kids in soccer,
a sport I never played, um, including my four sons, um,
learn, learned an awful lot about, um,
everybody's different and, uh, you know, and I don't care.
(30:59):
Uh, I think the greatest team sport in the world,
to be honest with you is marching band. And,
I had two sons, uh,
lucky enough to be in a Wisconsin marching band.
And their, their leader who retired about 85 years old.
A couple of years ago, Mike LeCrone.
Um, my, my older son, uh, they,
the band was playing at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in
(31:20):
Cleveland.
My older son would graduated there three years after.
Um,
and this guy's got 300 or 400 people in his eighties and
my, my, uh, older son went up and shook his hand,
and Mike looked at him and said, Cameron, how,
how's things going?
And I'm like, he hasn't seen my son, Jeff Cameron in years.
(31:43):
And Jeff worked hard enough.
He became a rank leader.
And, uh,
and he kind of defined himself by the marching band in
Wisconsin.
Got to travel all over the country and this kind of stuff.
And I,
and I think the point is Mike has built trust of hundreds
and hundreds of people.
Um, and I think, you know,
every time that he can give a second or two, or just, uh,
(32:08):
you know, you, you can, when someone does something wrong, y
ou can come down on them hard, it usually doesn't work, or,
you know, or give them a second chance.
The most important thing is when someone makes a mistake,
they kind of know that they made the mistake. The quicker
they figured out on their own...and it's easy in music
because there's this thing called a key signature.
(32:30):
So a lot of mistakes are caused because of the key
signature and it's like, you know,
I always look and I have four different conductors I got.
His name is JJ on the big band.
I got Beth on the combo.
I got Larry Ross.
He was my conductor of a bell choir at church,
and I've got Joe Blomquist was my conductor at at the
(32:52):
church band.
And it's very, very different.
There are four different guys, four different styles.
But the part I love is everybody in that band would die for
them.
They want to play well for them.
You know, you can't read a book and say, okay,
this is what my style is going to be.
You have enough confidence in yourself to say, you know,
(33:15):
I'm very comfortable with who I am.
I'm very caring with who you are.
I came from a very diverse high school,
north of New York City.
Some of my best friends didn't go to my church necessarily
and didn't matter to me.
And we're still very, very good friends 50, 60 years later.
(33:38):
We have one of us lives in Ireland.
The rest of us will fly to Ireland for his funeral.
It's that kind of friendship.
But, you know,
it to me the friendships that you get out of this.
And I live in a retirement community here.
Most of my street here, they go out once a month,
(33:59):
we have a neighborhood dinner.
And they're all like,
how much longer you're going to do the band?
And I'm like, it's up to the dear Lord,
I'm going to give it everything I got until I can't.
I said, I got 50 people I didn't even know two years ago.
Come on.
And my kids,
the other thing is the ability to give back to the youth.
(34:21):
I probably been to 25 weddings for kids that played soccer
for me or basketball for me,
or played in my bands and this kind of stuff.
And, you know,
the one thing that I want to make sure that I talk about,
my four sons I would put up against anybody there for great
great kids.
I never would hire them.
(34:41):
I never wanted to be their boss.
I bought them all a car,
because I didn't want them a junior high school thinking
about cars.
I want them to think about college.
And, you know, I remember the way I was junior high school,
Oh what, you know,
when can I get a car and all this crap. And it's like,
I want to take that off the table.
And because they've all three of them went to Big 10
(35:04):
schools Purdue and Wisconsin.
The other guy took a little longer,
he goes to a golf school in Florida.
And now he's selling and designing golf courses across the
United States.
And you gotta, you gotta find that passion,
both in your kids, your employees, your band.
You know, that that passion is what drives me,
(35:26):
other people's passion.
It's when I, you know,
someone's playing our lead alto will play Georgia,
which is one of the most beautiful solos gone, going,
and you just look at his face when he's done.
That's the stuff that kind of turns me on.
And, you know,
I think my band afforded him that opportunity.
(35:47):
And when you get an applause and you're getting more and
more because you get better and better on the guitar.
When the band applauds guys in the band, your peer group.
Is there anything better than that.
No, absolutely not.
At the Christmas gig when we did, what was it,
Christmas Baby?
(36:08):
And a bunch of people in the band said, Louie,
every time you played the solos in that,
you're absolutely right.
That peer feedback that you, to your point,
the hard work that you've done has paid off when your
peers, your contemporaries are complimenting you,
there's nothing sweeter.
(36:30):
And we're doing it for the passion.
We could do this for probably hours,
but for the sake of time,
it's really clear that you're a great leader, Bruce,
and then you're right, you bring the love and the passion.
Is there anything you'd like to say in closing?
No,
just that I'm blessed to have a friend such as yourself,
(36:53):
but I'm blessed to have a band such as our band.
And, you know,
when people call me boss and all this kind of stuff,
I take that as a term of endearment because I don't want to
be anybody's boss.
I think of people,
there's about seven in the band that call me boss.
And it's like, you know, I don't mind being called a boss.
(37:14):
I just don't want to be the boss.
I want to be the guy that can set up a situation so that
you can play that solo at Christmas and have your peer
group,
which means a heck of a lot more than if I go to you and
say, Louie, that's a great solo.
When you hear it from your peer group,
that's what I go for.
That's the thing that...
and the same in the sales organization, you know,
(37:36):
you set up a situation where the fellow sales people say,
boy, that's a great deal that you just closed.
It's not about the money.
It's about, boy, you know,
you competed against some of the hardest companies in the
world,
and you've done something that we've never done as an
organization and this kind of thing.
(37:56):
Those are the guys that I really, truly enjoy working with.
Yeah, well Bruce.
Thank you very much for your time.
I know you're busy and you got lots to do.
But, uh,
continue to do great work and thanks for the things you're
putting out into the world.
I know you you support a lot of youth. The band supports
youth.
And so thanks again for taking your time.
I love you.
You're a great American.
(38:17):
You're a great band leader,
and I'd like to echo right back to you,
I'm truly blessed to have you in my life and call you a
friend as well.
All right, Louie.
Love you as well.
Have a great day.
Thanks again for joining us and listening to this episode
of Leadership and Love.
I would like to challenge you to ask yourself what's one
thing that you heard today that you can implement
immediately to improve your leadership and accelerate your
(38:41):
growth.
If you've gotten value out of this episode or learned
something that you can implement today,
we'd ask that you please share it with those that you care
about.
Our goal is to create more leaders who are leading with
love.
Welcome to the Leadership and Love Podcast.
We will cover leadership, mindset, personal development,
and sales and marketing.
You'll experience thought-provoking conversations with both
nationally and internationally recognized leaders.
Our goal is to inspire you and deliver actionable items
that you can implement that will help you accelerate your
(00:22):
growth.
Get ready to discover the magic and the power when you lead
with love.
I'm very, very excited today.
I've got not only a dear friend, but also my boss,
Bruce Cameron here.
Bruce Cameron is currently retired,
and we're going to get to that in a second.
(00:44):
But in his retirement, he's started,
and you might have started it before you retired, Bruce,
but he started a thing called the Vintage Swing Band,
kind of as a side project hobby in his basement that's
turned into just a really going turn.
And can you tell the audience just a brief kind of
(01:04):
background of what you did and how long you were doing it?
Sure. So I, uh, I went to engineering school.
I don't exactly know why.
I was really good at mechanical drafting, uh, in
high school mechanical engineering kind of sounded like
that.
I was good in math.
So I got into a decent engineering school.
I was in a five-year, co-op work study program.
(01:27):
And unfortunately there was, there was no, uh,
sales programs in, uh, in engineering.
So I graduated, uh, uh, engineering school.
I immediately went for my MBA,
and I started moving around. In the computer world,
back in the late mid to late seventies, early eighties,
you went with the way. What was the product? Was it
(01:47):
business software? Then,
it turned out to be engineering software.
Then it turned out to be a manufacturing software.
I did a lot with robotic software back in the aerospace
days, back in the eighties.
And then where should you live to sell this kind of stuff?
Well, I lived in LA and that was all aerospace.
I lived in Dallas.
That was all oil and chemical.
(02:08):
I lived in Cincinnati.
And, uh,
unfortunately that was too small a city to have a lot of
companies that I wanted to work for.
So we moved to Chicago, which is very diverse, and for me,
uh, was the right place for me to be,
although I'm a New Yorker and, uh,
never really thought much of Chicago,
but as far as a career,
(02:28):
international companies set their headquarters up in
Chicago.
Chicago is the center of attention and for U.S.
based companies, this kind of thing.
And, uh, I've been able to change jobs.
Um, sometimes when I knew it wasn't the right job,
I changed pretty quickly, but I had two really good runs.
Each was about eight or nine years.
Did a lot of hiring of salespeople.
(02:50):
The other thing that, uh,
that probably is my claim to fame,
I'm a big fan of vertical selling.
What is that?
I don't want to be everything to everybody.
I want my sales force to be experts in certain industries
that my customers are in. The industries we had chosen
were, um, service management companies that, uh,
(03:12):
service product, uh, or apparel.
Uh, most people that are selling into, uh, uh,
stores and manufacturing companies,
everything is SKU based.
Well, apparel is not skew base.
So you have your size, your color,
your style of the product.
No software back in those days could do it.
I'm competing against SAP and Oracle, some of the big guys.
(03:35):
And, uh, I had a development group in Chicago, um, that,
that, uh, we developed a lot of, uh,
the software extensions for this stuff.
And, uh, and then I would just give it to, uh,
to my partners, uh,
as far as their ability to sell the product,
but we do the documentation.
So we sell our core product, but vertical selling, uh,
(03:57):
as far as developing your, um,
relationship with your customer.
So you can talk to our, our, uh,
our beta customer in apparel was Jockey menswear.
We had a team that went in there and understood their
business and how they account,
what kind of margins they get, and this kind of stuff.
So we had about five different verticals.
(04:19):
It really distinguished us from, from the pack.
So the, to me,
the ability for a company to really know what they're good
at.
And then focus on that and then just stay with your
knitting.
Talk to customers, prospects in that area in, uh,
that want that kind of product.
(04:40):
They're going to get so much more trusting of you, uh,
because you're talking their, their language.
Uh, and you understand what they're going through.
And my home company at JBA, uh, was in the UK,
and UK did not like all the development we're doing because
they, they had to develop in the UK.
That's just the way they were.
(05:01):
But, uh, there was some,
some major differences with the user interface between the
UK.
The languages are different and, um, but, uh,
they started understanding what we were doing and, uh,
it got copied all over the world.
And, uh, so most of the...
I'm sorry to interrupt, Bruce,
but what were you doing that got copied around the world?
(05:23):
Uh, so I would develop apparel software.
We'd package it up and then all my,
the other regions for that company.
Uh, they'd say, Kate,
come to Chicago and we'll get you trained up.
And literally we got, uh, we were in essence,
the product development group for these vertical
industries.
(05:43):
So when I say we give it around the world,
I'm saying we'd give it to all the other divisions of my
company to expand their product offer.
Right, and when you say...
and I want to be clear for our audience when you're talking
about vertical that in my...
in my world that's niche a niche market.
Right. Correct.
You're talking about exactly your vertical is the same
(06:05):
thing as a niche market
Exactly.
And it's funny when you learn some basic things early on in
one's career, whether you retire or it's 30 years later,
you'll go back to those basics.
It's hard to keep the newness, if you will,
after about five, six, seven, eight years.
(06:26):
In fact, our band,
we're going on our sixth year at this point in time.
And, you know, I'm looking,
how can we breathe new life in this?
In fact, we've started a smaller band called, The Combo.
And we're expanding instead of 20s to 40s,
we're going 40s to 70s and try to get a new niche and
(06:46):
create differentiation between the two bands and things of
that sort.
So I'm, you know, if I had to define my career,
my leadership style is kind of soft spoken.
I'm six foot eight back in the day.
So I didn't need to be a big loud mouth.
(07:08):
And usually I'm not...
there are times when if somebody's just not treating us,
or, or whatever fairly, you know,
it's always good to have a temper when you need it.
But to me,
the most important thing is to get to know my people. In
sales organization,
the other term I used as a poster child,
(07:28):
you got to find that guy that's going to break the bank.
Because that's the guy that you want your new guys
interviewing with.
Because if he can break the bank,
and I got a similar background to him,
I can break the bank kind of thing. My sales organization,
the largest was about 100 guys. It's important to hire that
(07:49):
first person that's just gonna do extremely well.
And sometimes,
sometimes with that person doesn't come all the other
qualities you might be looking at.
It's tough on a sales organization,
because it's really easy to define what they're interested
in, it's money, you know, pure and simple.
(08:11):
Now in a band, we we, uh, the little bit we pay,
where people are not coming to band practice every other
week and doing 15 to 20 gigs for anything other than pure
enjoyment of music. It's a volunteer situation.
And they're managed differently.
And it's up to us to determine, you know,
(08:35):
what's the expectation?
We've actually, we have a leadership team.
I have an organization structure in the band that people
look at me like, what are you talking about?
I actually don't even play much in my own band. I'm more of
the kind of the leader of I do the contracts and,
and a lot of that and the recruiting, that kind of stuff.
(08:57):
But, you know, it's important that each leader has six,
seven, eight guys.
Because if you have more than that,
it's hard to really get to know,
know somebody and know what's going to make them tick and
this kind of stuff.
And, you know, when you got some of your top guys,
you don't want to get too far away from them.
The other thing that I think is extremely important,
(09:19):
certainly in the sales organization,
I wanted to be that sales guy, the sales leader,
the general manager, the president, that the cut,
that my guys were very, very comfortable bringing me in.
I don't want to be on center stage.
I want my guys to be on center stage.
(09:40):
I consider myself one of the best sales guys I'd ever met.
But I made a lot more money when I had a lot of sales guys
reporting to me doing extremely well.
And it, you know, it was about 29, 30 years old.
I'm kind of thinking, man, these other guys I'm with,
and some of our partners and Microsoft and some of them,
(10:01):
like, they're doubling what I make.
What the heck is going on here?
And being the best sales guy, to me,
is not near as important as being the best leader and
finding the right guys of character.
I don't care how good a musician or how good a salesman
they are.
When they turn cancerous, you're not going to fix it.
(10:22):
You don't have the time,
and you're going to lose other people along the way.
And we've had a couple situations like that in the band and
any organization.
But it comes down to, you know,
just really paying attention to the people aspects of any
business to understand what's going on.
(10:45):
I had one of the things I like when I hire a top notch
sales guy,
I asked him to write down the biggest W-2 that they've ever
had.
And they put in a piece of paper and I say, okay,
this is our goal.
We got to beat this together.
And, uh, I had one organization, uh,
and I was still pretty young as a manager,
as in mid thirties.
(11:06):
I had some guys pulling down seven, 800 grand.
And, uh, the other part of this is ego control.
I had no idea.
I thought all these guys wanted to make a lot of money.
No, well, that wasn't exactly true.
They didn't know what to do with a lot of money.
So they started, uh, uh,
stepping out on their families and their wives and their
(11:26):
drinking and their gambling.
And I'm like, what the heck is going on?
And, uh, and I actually, uh,
did a lot of studies on ego control because that, you know,
there's not the worst in building a tremendous
organization.
And I looked at like the,
the one year the Bears won it all.
That was, that was the last time they won.
I think it was in 85.
(11:47):
And I think a lot of it was those guys,
they got out of their egos, got out of control.
And, uh, you look at the great, great teams,
like a Green Bay under Lombardi and, uh, and some of those,
uh, Bellichek's teams,
they don't even have their names on their, on their back.
Everybody is an equal.
Um, the team is as good as the weakest link.
And I firmly believe in that, that, uh, you know,
(12:09):
you gotta, if you're going to be a team for the longterm,
and again, longterm in these days is five, six years,
but not a one hit wonder.
Um, it's extremely important that you build up the ego,
but you don't get, let the ego get out of control.
That's interesting.
I've recently been watching some highlights of the 85
(12:31):
Bears.
It's funny that you bring that up.
And one of the things that I noticed is,
it didn't matter who made a play.
Everybody surrounded that player and congratulated them.
Right.
And they were all, to your point, they didn't have...
they were proud of what they were doing together.
They weren't, it wasn't all about me, me, me.
And that ego,
(12:52):
you've got some great wisdom in what you've been talking
about, because there is a fine line.
We want to build people up,
but we don't want to get so egotistical that they think we
can't live without them.
Because nothing's further from the truth,
anybody can be replaced.
One of the other things I thought that was very powerful
that you touched on was the fact that once they had that
(13:16):
fame and fortune, if you will,
they didn't know how to handle it. Right?
And that power and fame went to their head.
And it's much like a rock star, right?
or great musicians that get there,
but they don't know what to do with it.
And they turn to the, like you said,
they step out on their wives.
Excuse me, they turn to alcohol or drugs,
those kinds of things.
(13:37):
And then the whole thing goes off the rail and it really
literally implodes.
I'd also like to say that I've done some leadership where
I've gone into teams like for other companies.
And it's amazing to me how one person can suck an
organization down.
That one bad apple can suck a whole organization down.
(14:00):
It's incredible.
And you're right.
Again, you had a bunch of golden nuggets in there, Bruce.
And one of them is that once you've identified that person,
you've got to get them out of the organization as quick as
possible,
because they're going to take good people down with them if
not the whole organization or that whole department.
There's no question that.
You and I have had some very,
(14:23):
I'll call enlightening conversations over the last couple
of years since I've been privileged to join the band.
And you said something about the caliber of the person
being more important to you than their skills.
I'd like you to talk about that to our audience to get us
going right off the bat,
(14:44):
so that they have an understanding of what you mean by
that.
Sure.
So, you know, when you're building an organization,
whether it be a sales organization or a band or raising
four sons,
you you want to instill or find people of character.
(15:04):
And what that means in my mind is somebody that always kind
of thinks in terms of a whole piece, the whole band,
the whole organization,
as opposed to just their personal success,
someone that has empathy, not only for their whole worker,
(15:25):
but in my mind,
the most important empathy anybody has is for the
customer.
Understanding what the customer wants.
It doesn't really matter what you're selling.
Sometimes the leader, his customer is subordinate.
But you know,
I look for that person that's going to fit the
organization.
(15:45):
And then hopefully, in a band,
they're also a very good musician.
You, as an example of this,
came into a jazz band with not a lot of jazz experience.
But the type of person you were,
and there's a couple other guys in the band like this,
(16:07):
did not want to be the weak link in the organization.
And you work very, very hard.
And the neat thing was, as you were getting better,
everybody felt that they needed to get better.
Even though a lot of the guys were really good musicians,
because it's that...
(16:28):
it's that character of Louis Sharp and other people,
that kind of move the organization ahead to the next level.
And that's what I mean, when I talk about character.
I have four sons, I talked about them.
Obviously, I didn't hire my sons,
but the oldest son had to set the stage, He had to be that,
(16:50):
that person that, that, in essence, was the leader.
I was the oldest in my family.
I have three siblings.
And although they live back in New York,
they know that I've always operate in the best interests of
the family, or the organization, or whatever.
So when I when I talk about that, when I interview people,
(17:12):
and that's not to say I always get it right,
but that's probably in my mind,
the most important asset is the character of the person,
their work ethic,
their ability to be part of a team and understand what that
means.
And also help, help me. You know, this organization,
(17:34):
the band is much further along than my original thought
process as to what it was going to be and that kind of
stuff.
And I need future thinkers.
And there's nobody better that came into a band that didn't
even really play the same music that we were playing.
And, and got through that hurdle,
(17:54):
but helped me a lot to get myself and the band to the next
hurdle.
There's three or four people in the band that I call them
the glue.
None of my glues are my best musicians.
But they're the guys that basically keep keep us
comfortable.
They're loving what they do.
They know that they can speak up and, and say their piece.
(18:17):
They come here for two hours every two weeks really as it's
almost like a breath of fresh air to get out of the world.
Some of us are retired.
A lot of us, they come to this for those two hours,
make great music together,
and know that they're going to feel good during the
(18:38):
process.
So you touched on something that I think is truly golden
nugget, Bruce.
I'd like you to talk a little bit more about that.
And that is that sometimes as a leader,
your number one client are the people under you.
Can you help our audience understand what you mean by that?
So my whole life I've been selling what I would call
(18:59):
continuous improvement,
happens to be the product of software,
but we're trying to make our clients better and better. A
nd,
one of the first things I do with a client is I truly try
to understand what their goals are,
where they want to be five years from now,
what their expectations are and things of that sort.
To me,
that's the exact same interview I'm going to have with a
(19:21):
client, with a prospective employee.
What is your goal?
You know, so many people,
you ask them for their five-year goals and they have no
idea that they're in their minds to start a job,
and I don't want someone starting a job.
I want someone that's going to be part of my team for a
minimum of five years and that we're going to do a lot of
(19:42):
building together. And, you know,
a lot of people just don't think that way and the other
thing I do very, very different than most,
which I think is incredibly important, o
nce I tell people my five-year goal, then
I work backwards from this is where I want to get to and
(20:02):
these are the steps I got to go through.
To me, the same thing with managing a sales organization.
The final step in my mind is who signs their purchase
order?
When can that happen?
Does he have the authority?
I could care less about the demos and how many sales calls
and how many lunches and gosh,
I got to play golf with them and all this kind of stuff.
(20:24):
Tell me what that last meeting looks like.
And it's almost like in our band,
help me understand what is the audience going to feel when
they hear this song and it's finally done perfectly at that
point in time.
We had a Christmas concert, and we worked on a song,
Hark the Herald Angels Sing.
(20:46):
Uh,
it's probably was written by one of the toughest arrangers.
His name is Gordon Goodwin.
Probably a bit beyond our band.
Uh, but each year we took it out,
we played it a couple more times,
but we knew it wasn't ready for prime time and, uh,
we put it back and obviously for Christmas music,
we're not practicing it all that often, but this,
(21:07):
this past year, after four years, we had the right band,
we had the right, uh, temperament,
we had the right musicians and, uh,
we performed it at all three gigs, and it went real well.
So sometimes, uh,
you gotta have the patience to grow whatever you're trying
to grow, but to me, it's very,
(21:30):
very important to know what the end game looks like. T
here's too many people that, uh,
they talk about the process and, uh, you know,
when you're paying for a sales organization,
some of the deals that I had to source,
I'd be putting out a couple hundred grand, uh,
as I'd had development people there and engineering and
salespeople and we're flying all over the world and all
(21:52):
this kind of stuff.
And, uh, you know, when I look at it at any salesman,
the best, the second best, uh,
thing to do in any kind of deal is pull out early if you
know, you're not going to win.
So typically, you know, you're not going to win.
If you can't picture what that last meeting was going to
look like, who signs, where is it going to be signed?
(22:15):
You know,
a lot of times you're trying to get year end business.
And, uh, I hear invariably,
are you sure the guy's going to be in the office between
Christmas and New Year's?
And, uh, geez, I never thought of that.
You know, a lot of guys take vacation then.
That's the guy that's going to sign.
You better, you better start saying, Hey,
I'll be there on December 30th.
(22:36):
I've missed a lot of New Year's Eves.
Uh, I missed a lot of birthdays.
I've missed a lot of anniversaries.
My wife understood that.
I was lucky enough to retire at 59.
But, uh, to me, uh,
it's extremely important to be where you need to be to give
the customer the best possible service.
I love what you're talking about here because it's so
(22:58):
powerful.
We had a deal down in, uh, for the band down in Navy Pier.
I know, you know, well, um, uh, I doubled our, uh,
highest rate we've ever charged, uh,
the person there jumped on it.
I'm like, jeez, I came in too, too low.
One of the challenges I got in the band there,
there's no price leader out there.
(23:19):
I have no idea what, what we can charge.
And it turns out our band is probably getting more money
than, uh,
there's about four or five other bands that I know them
well enough.
They were comparing notes, but, uh, here we're going in,
making all this money and, uh, and this kind of thing.
We're playing a Navy Pier, you know, how,
how it's gotta be our best gig and, uh,
a lot of fun and they're doing a fundraising and that's a
(23:42):
$500 a plate dinner and all of this stuff.
I didn't ask the right questions.
And what's funny was I asked the band, i
f we could go and do that exact same gig for the same
amount of money, maybe even a bit more money,
would you want to do it?
And invariably the band said, no, it wasn't fun.
(24:02):
It wasn't fun for the band.
Uh, we did a lot of, uh, uh, rehearsal, not,
not band rehearsal.
We were rehearsing, uh, some of the skits they were doing.
We didn't know about that.
Uh,
there's a whole bunch of stuff that we've kind of got off
course.
So you gotta be very, very careful.
Even, even myself as a leader kind of got wrapped up into,
(24:23):
Oh, Navy Pier.
And we're making more money than we've ever made and all
that kind of stuff.
If my band's not having fun,
they're not going to drive an hour to rehearsal.
Um, there there's just not enough money in, uh,
in this kind of stuff.
And I think that's the same way for, uh,
for sales organization.
It's gotta be fun.
(24:44):
And, uh, you know, it sometimes, even as a leader,
you got to get wrapped up in your own success.
And, uh, uh, you know, that's when I needed a boss.
And unfortunately, by the time he got to me, uh,
cause he was an IBMer, and he was very, very successful.
It was almost too late because, uh,
marriages started breaking up and, uh,
(25:06):
they used to call me Oprah Bruce because I had nine or 10
marital situations out of, out of about 150.
That even wives were asking to make an appointment to see
me.
And I'm like, I'm an engineer.
I don't understand this,
but it really made me appreciate this.
This ego thing is extremely important.
And he can't think he's better than his family.
(25:29):
Sometimes their own marriages are important.
A lot of times if I ever get the opportunity,
I like to meet the other half of the relationship.
I don't need to be the wife or a girlfriend or could be a
mother or how is the kid raised, especially with the band,
uh, two is we're all very,
very honest with each other about states of deal,
(25:51):
states of, uh, the music, uh,
states of our family and those kinds of things.
And, uh, uh, you know, it,
sometimes it's hard to be brutally honest with oneself as
to what we need to do.
Yeah, that's it.
You've touched on a couple of things there that I think are
really important.
One is, I think, great leaders,
and I consider you a great leader.
(26:12):
Great leaders go out and ask the team, hey,
how's it going?
How did you like that gig?
And for those of you that are listening that aren't
familiar, Navy Pier is a big deal in Chicago.
It's a, it's a, there's a thing called Navy Pier.
There's a bunch of things on there at the very end of it.
It's this big, huge ballroom.
So that's what Bruce was referring to at Navy Pier.
(26:33):
But you, the point that you made in that,
when you went back and asked the band, hey,
would you do that gig again?
That was, you're right.
There was just for the, as a member of the band,
that perspective on that, it was just way too much time,
way too much time to pull that gig off,
way too much hassle logistically with parking and trying to
get in the venue and out of the venue and that whole
(26:53):
shebang.
And it ended up being an all day sucker, right?
For the entire band.
That was an all day sucker.
The other thing that you touched on that I think is really
powerful.
And if you guys haven't got caught this,
I want you to re-listen to what Bruce has been talking
about.
Because what he's talked about is what he learned in his
life early in his career,
he's used all through his life in relationships,
(27:15):
in leading a band, in his retirement, these basic skills,
the basics he called them,
that you go back to work all the time.
And he, I think he's being very modest and humble.
When you talk about ego, I think you'd be,
you're being very modest and humble, Bruce,
because people were seeking him out for marriage counseling
because he's got these leadership skills and the ability to
(27:38):
communicate.
And so he could communicate with his team.
He said something else that was very important.
I don't want you to let go by.
He made it a safe environment for people to voice their
opinion.
I've watched him do that plenty of times.
I can tell you that I also watched him raise his voice at
somebody when we had a band gig outside on a big trailer
(27:58):
and somebody,
the band that was going to play after started putting their
speakers in front of his trombone players and the saxophone
players.
And it's the only time I ever heard Bruce raise his voice.
But so there are times when you need to use that authority,
but it's very rare.
And I want to talk, I want you to talk about something,
Bruce, that you mentioned.
What did you do to build that relationship with your
(28:22):
employees and know about them?
Well, it's,
it's hard to build a relationship unless you got the
opportunity to spend some one-on-one time with them and
just talk and get them to talk.
And, uh, your best leaders are your best listeners.
And sometimes I can, uh,
gab a little bit more than I need to.
I, I've been told on the front end of the band that I,
(28:44):
I talk too much and I'm trying to hold it back a little bit
and I, and I get that. And I've, uh,
we've been to a couple of different bands where it's been
very successful and that kind of stuff.
But, uh, no, I, I,
I think people got to appreciate the fact.
Number one, a lot of, a lot of someone,
people that are going to tell you stuff, they don't,
(29:06):
they want it held in confidence.
They got to be able to trust me that I'm not going to go
around and say, jeez, this guy, uh, uh, you know,
doesn't particularly like, uh,
these other three players and this kind of thing.
Uh, now that's not to say sometimes, uh, uh, you know,
you just gotta be very,
very tactful as far as conveying information to other
(29:29):
people.
There's, uh, uh,
there's some people in any organization that, uh,
that are loud mouth and are exaggerators and, uh, you know,
they, they, they'll take what you say,
and then all of a sudden it's blown out proportion and, uh,
uh, you know, you don't,
you don't fail somebody more than once, as far as, uh,
(29:52):
losing their confidence in, in you, me, um,
they're just not going to give you that opportunity.
So you got to,
you got to know kind of when to fold them and when to hold
them kind of stuff as far as information.
Um, I, I like to, we, we have kids in our band, uh,
sophomores in high schools.
(30:12):
And, uh, we've, it was about three of us in our seventies.
Um, but everybody's there kind of for the same reason.
They want to make great music together.
They want to grow together.
I've got a couple of kids that are just extremely good
musicians and, uh, they kind of inspire the band that, uh,
you know, to be around young kids like this that are, uh,
(30:34):
really loving the music, uh, and that kind of stuff.
So I, you know, for me,
I coached probably over 800 kids in soccer,
a sport I never played, um, including my four sons, um,
learn, learned an awful lot about, um,
everybody's different and, uh, you know, and I don't care.
(30:59):
Uh, I think the greatest team sport in the world,
to be honest with you is marching band. And,
I had two sons, uh,
lucky enough to be in a Wisconsin marching band.
And their, their leader who retired about 85 years old.
A couple of years ago, Mike LeCrone.
Um, my, my older son, uh, they,
the band was playing at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in
(31:20):
Cleveland.
My older son would graduated there three years after.
Um,
and this guy's got 300 or 400 people in his eighties and
my, my, uh, older son went up and shook his hand,
and Mike looked at him and said, Cameron, how,
how's things going?
And I'm like, he hasn't seen my son, Jeff Cameron in years.
(31:43):
And Jeff worked hard enough.
He became a rank leader.
And, uh,
and he kind of defined himself by the marching band in
Wisconsin.
Got to travel all over the country and this kind of stuff.
And I,
and I think the point is Mike has built trust of hundreds
and hundreds of people.
Um, and I think, you know,
every time that he can give a second or two, or just, uh,
(32:08):
you know, you, you can, when someone does something wrong, y
ou can come down on them hard, it usually doesn't work, or,
you know, or give them a second chance.
The most important thing is when someone makes a mistake,
they kind of know that they made the mistake. The quicker
they figured out on their own...and it's easy in music
because there's this thing called a key signature.
(32:30):
So a lot of mistakes are caused because of the key
signature and it's like, you know,
I always look and I have four different conductors I got.
His name is JJ on the big band.
I got Beth on the combo.
I got Larry Ross.
He was my conductor of a bell choir at church,
and I've got Joe Blomquist was my conductor at at the
(32:52):
church band.
And it's very, very different.
There are four different guys, four different styles.
But the part I love is everybody in that band would die for
them.
They want to play well for them.
You know, you can't read a book and say, okay,
this is what my style is going to be.
You have enough confidence in yourself to say, you know,
(33:15):
I'm very comfortable with who I am.
I'm very caring with who you are.
I came from a very diverse high school,
north of New York City.
Some of my best friends didn't go to my church necessarily
and didn't matter to me.
And we're still very, very good friends 50, 60 years later.
(33:38):
We have one of us lives in Ireland.
The rest of us will fly to Ireland for his funeral.
It's that kind of friendship.
But, you know,
it to me the friendships that you get out of this.
And I live in a retirement community here.
Most of my street here, they go out once a month,
(33:59):
we have a neighborhood dinner.
And they're all like,
how much longer you're going to do the band?
And I'm like, it's up to the dear Lord,
I'm going to give it everything I got until I can't.
I said, I got 50 people I didn't even know two years ago.
Come on.
And my kids,
the other thing is the ability to give back to the youth.
(34:21):
I probably been to 25 weddings for kids that played soccer
for me or basketball for me,
or played in my bands and this kind of stuff.
And, you know,
the one thing that I want to make sure that I talk about,
my four sons I would put up against anybody there for great
great kids.
I never would hire them.
(34:41):
I never wanted to be their boss.
I bought them all a car,
because I didn't want them a junior high school thinking
about cars.
I want them to think about college.
And, you know, I remember the way I was junior high school,
Oh what, you know,
when can I get a car and all this crap. And it's like,
I want to take that off the table.
And because they've all three of them went to Big 10
(35:04):
schools Purdue and Wisconsin.
The other guy took a little longer,
he goes to a golf school in Florida.
And now he's selling and designing golf courses across the
United States.
And you gotta, you gotta find that passion,
both in your kids, your employees, your band.
You know, that that passion is what drives me,
(35:26):
other people's passion.
It's when I, you know,
someone's playing our lead alto will play Georgia,
which is one of the most beautiful solos gone, going,
and you just look at his face when he's done.
That's the stuff that kind of turns me on.
And, you know,
I think my band afforded him that opportunity.
(35:47):
And when you get an applause and you're getting more and
more because you get better and better on the guitar.
When the band applauds guys in the band, your peer group.
Is there anything better than that.
No, absolutely not.
At the Christmas gig when we did, what was it,
Christmas Baby?
(36:08):
And a bunch of people in the band said, Louie,
every time you played the solos in that,
you're absolutely right.
That peer feedback that you, to your point,
the hard work that you've done has paid off when your
peers, your contemporaries are complimenting you,
there's nothing sweeter.
(36:30):
And we're doing it for the passion.
We could do this for probably hours,
but for the sake of time,
it's really clear that you're a great leader, Bruce,
and then you're right, you bring the love and the passion.
Is there anything you'd like to say in closing?
No,
just that I'm blessed to have a friend such as yourself,
(36:53):
but I'm blessed to have a band such as our band.
And, you know,
when people call me boss and all this kind of stuff,
I take that as a term of endearment because I don't want to
be anybody's boss.
I think of people,
there's about seven in the band that call me boss.
And it's like, you know, I don't mind being called a boss.
(37:14):
I just don't want to be the boss.
I want to be the guy that can set up a situation so that
you can play that solo at Christmas and have your peer
group,
which means a heck of a lot more than if I go to you and
say, Louie, that's a great solo.
When you hear it from your peer group,
that's what I go for.
That's the thing that...
and the same in the sales organization, you know,
(37:36):
you set up a situation where the fellow sales people say,
boy, that's a great deal that you just closed.
It's not about the money.
It's about, boy, you know,
you competed against some of the hardest companies in the
world,
and you've done something that we've never done as an
organization and this kind of thing.
(37:56):
Those are the guys that I really, truly enjoy working with.
Yeah, well Bruce.
Thank you very much for your time.
I know you're busy and you got lots to do.
But, uh,
continue to do great work and thanks for the things you're
putting out into the world.
I know you you support a lot of youth. The band supports
youth.
And so thanks again for taking your time.
I love you.
You're a great American.
(38:17):
You're a great band leader,
and I'd like to echo right back to you,
I'm truly blessed to have you in my life and call you a
friend as well.
All right, Louie.
Love you as well.
Have a great day.
Thanks again for joining us and listening to this episode
of Leadership and Love.
I would like to challenge you to ask yourself what's one
thing that you heard today that you can implement
immediately to improve your leadership and accelerate your
(38:41):
growth.
If you've gotten value out of this episode or learned
something that you can implement today,
we'd ask that you please share it with those that you care
about.
Our goal is to create more leaders who are leading with
love.
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