September 6, 2024 • 19 mins
In this episode of Building Billions, I sit down with Craig Jackson, CEO of Barrett-Jackson, the world-renowned collector car auction company. Craig shares his journey of transforming a family business into a global brand, discussing the challenges of scaling, the importance of innovation, and the need to build a strong, loyal team. Learn how Craig’s passion for cars, customer experience, and philanthropy shaped Barrett-Jackson into an iconic lifestyle brand. Plus, discover his insights on entrepreneurship, leadership, and building a lasting legacy.
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Episode Transcript
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S1 (00:00):
All right. Hey, it's Brandon Dawson here with another episode
of Building Billions. I am with the remarkable Craig Jackson
of Barrett Jackson. This is going to be a fun interview.
You know, all day long we interview entrepreneurs that have
created remarkable things. And this business, it's a global brand.
S2 (00:16):
People come from all around the world here, all around,
televised everywhere. So yes.
S1 (00:21):
A family business.
S2 (00:22):
It is a family business. Start as a family business
now I have partners, but yes, start as a family
business was a family business for 50 years.
S1 (00:31):
So now it's my second or third, second generation, second generation.
S2 (00:36):
My kids didn't want to run it, so I brought
partners in so that it'll have a much longer life
to it, hopefully forever. It's forever. It's a name brand.
S1 (00:45):
Absolutely. I mean, anywhere I go in the world, people
know the name Barrett Jackson and they all know it's
an exciting event. How fun is it to build a
business that's not only creates the economic opportunity to have
the life you want, but it's an iconic brand.
S2 (01:00):
You know, it was a lot of fun. Uh, you know,
being an entrepreneur. Every decision, you know, ends up at
my desk. And I always thought, what is best for
the brand? What is best for the hobby? This hobby
is my business. But it's both ways. So I care
very much about the brand and my customers and the cars. And, uh,
(01:26):
that's what our whole transparency and integrity and the cars
are what they need to be is as they're described.
And the experience when you come here needs to be
more than you expected. And that goes to the brand.
And the brand is number one. And my wife manages
the brand and she's very protective of it, as was
(01:50):
my mother. So I have that helping me.
S1 (01:54):
And so taking a family business, it's hard for the
first generation to build a successful business, but for the
second generation to step in and actually blow it up
and make it even a bigger version of itself and
get to work with your spouse. I work with Natalie,
my spouse, and we've been going on trips together, what,
probably ten years now? Yeah. And so seeing you guys together,
(02:14):
you're you're definitely a powerhouse and having your family and
your spouse to be able to work with you and
protect the brand, blow the brand up and really be
a steward of the future brand. Because you guys with
this transaction you've done is to lock in your legacy. Yes.
And to make sure it flourishes and prospers. What? When
(02:35):
you think of the next ten years, what excites you?
Just getting bigger or is there some other things that
excite you about this?
S3 (02:41):
Why?
S2 (02:41):
You know, I had quite a few suitors when we
had the investment bankers and brought some great companies. And
at the end of the day, it was all the
tentacles of WME, me. That is basically if you look
at everything in my business plan, and I told Ari,
Ari Emanuel that I'd met Mark McCormick 20 years ago
(03:05):
when he was doing the tennis tournament here. We shared
the same PR person, and he told me his philosophy,
and I go, that's a great philosophy. And that was diversification.
You control the brand and all the revenue streams off
of the brand, but that everything needs to complement everything
else as you build it out. So when you look
(03:28):
around here, we, we sell cars, but at the same
time we sell real estate. We're in the vendor business,
you know, we sell food and beverage. We have multiple
revenue streams. That all goes to the lifestyle. So the
decision early on and when I got into this when
I was a kid and I grew up learning from
(03:51):
basically running the trash cruise, to running the drivers, to
building the tents to computerizing the company back in the 80s,
early 80s when I took computer programming and I always
wanted to make things better, even though I was in
the third position, you know, fourth with my mother, but
(04:12):
my father, he fell ill with colon cancer. So I
started taking on more of the ops away from my
brother early on. So I got a taste of everything,
every segment of this company. Back when we only ran
one auction a year, we only had three employees plus
the family. So my assistant also booked all the travel.
(04:34):
And you really learn to do it from the boot
straps of a budget to, you know, you you run
one auction a year. I would restore cars the rest
of the year and sell them here. When my brother
fell sick, he got sick at Monterey and he died
six weeks later, so I had never planned on being
in the number one spot. I figured he'd run it forever.
(04:55):
I had other companies, some I probably shouldn't have sold.
I had a company where I wrote a computer program
to order food from the internet and deliver it to
your house. Oh, no. And I sold that, uh, pretty
lucrative business nowadays. But, uh, you know, I needed to
focus on Barrett Jackson. I said, I'll sell all my
other companies. I'm an entrepreneur at heart. I see something,
(05:19):
I see a niche. I don't see anybody doing anything.
All right, here's an opportunity. I was a bachelor, and
I didn't like to cook, so I said, all right,
we need a restaurant delivery company to your house, and
we should use the internet to do it. So I've
always been innovative, I think, and looking at how technology
can change things. So when I took over the company,
(05:40):
the first I had already put us on the internet
in 94 before my brother's passing in 95, we wrote
the first app to bid via the internet. Wow. Which
was way ahead of the curve. Uh, did online streaming.
Tying in online bidding, which was way ahead of the curve,
brought in live television. So from 96 to now, we've
(06:04):
been on live television. So my goal was, how do
you get out of a niche market into a much
broader mainstream market and bring new people into the hobby?
And that's basically been the formula. And then when they
get here, how do you entertain them all day long?
And I did that by asking my customers what they want.
(06:25):
And we made an announcement this morning based on input
from doing questionnaires, I did questionnaires, endeavor did questionnaires on
what your customers want. And we announced we're going to
do two scottsdale's we're going to do one in October,
and we're going to do one in January. And they
like the festival, the lifestyle more than they like just
(06:46):
going to a convention center.
S1 (06:49):
Yeah. It gives it gives people something to do. It
brings in a lot of people into into the marketplace here.
A lot of consumers. It's an environment. I mean, it's
to me it's Disneyland for adults. It is for car guys.
S2 (07:01):
I mean, it's part country. You know, it's part fair
with the fair food. It's high end. You know, we
have on location serving very high end luxury. So it's
we start off the week with family day. You know,
this year we added an element, we added foreigner. So
we added a concert to it. Then we went into
Family Day, which is all about getting youth involved. We
(07:23):
created a car show that is just for, uh, 80s
cars and up. So it's all getting influencers and YouTubers
to be the judges bring their cars. That was on Saturday.
We had 50 of the world's greatest hot rods in
the main auction arena. They're all going up for a
cash prizes, so it's slicing it into different demographics, different days,
(07:47):
different things to do. It's not always the same thing
and we program it. You've got live music down on
one end. Down here. This is the place to sit
and watch all the cars come across the auction block.
You've got 140 some food vendors on property, anything you
want to eat. So if you come here, you can
(08:08):
spend the whole day. And every day is a little
bit different. The types of cars, the prices, the ancillary
things that are going on.
S1 (08:16):
And it's a it's a family environment. Little kids can
be here. They love it. They get to see all
this amazing stuff. You know, being an iconic brand builder. Right.
So which is what what you are you innovated a
family business to be in an iconic brand that has
the systems, the people, the operations. It's a hard step
for most entrepreneurs to make because they get stuck in
(08:38):
just doing the same thing over and over and over.
S2 (08:40):
I'm bored. So full disclosure, I'm extremely A.D.D.. As my
wife says, I would get bored in an avalanche.
S1 (08:47):
So that's a good thing.
S2 (08:48):
Though, right? I don't do the same thing every day. Um,
you know, it's it gets monotonous. And I don't like monotony.
I like structure, but I like creativity. And people around
me that think outside the box. And how we debrief
a debrief after every auction is not to be taken
(09:09):
personally that I'm picking on how can we do things better?
What's the feedback from the customers? How do we improve
the systems, and then what should we add to it?
S1 (09:18):
Yeah, the tenacity for the client journey, right. The the experience,
the overall experience. What I find with a lot of
businesses that struggle is the business owner gets so consumed
doing the work, they don't actually have the headspace or
time to maintain that level of tenacity. And then the
discipline with the team to understand it's not personal. It's
part of the brand experience that we're trying to build.
(09:39):
When you think about your leadership because there's there's several
things you're known for in this community, not only building
an iconic brand. You and I have been going on
charitable organizations for, I don't know, ten, 12 years together.
You're a huge proponent of charitable and giving back. And,
and then the leadership position that you've been able to
take with moving thousands and thousands of people around the
(10:02):
world because you move your show around to what what
in your mind, if you were to narrow it down?
For entrepreneurs listening to this, what would you say is
the top three things as a business owner, that you
should stay focused on making sure you do in order
for your business to become like your business, an iconic experience.
S2 (10:20):
You know there's so many, but your your core, you
got to build a great team around you. You have
to learn to delegate. But check in, don't check out, uh, train.
Great people. I have some people who've been with me. 30.
The number one employee, 38 years. Wow. Uh, my ops
guy here is going on 35 years. Train them. Let
(10:43):
them do their thing. Uh, now I walk around, I
see stuff, I bring it up, you know, and they're like, yep.
Saw that. Usually they've seen the same thing and we adapt.
And you know, when weather changes or rain's coming, you adapt.
So building out a great team, going to other events.
And for me it's going to other events and seeing
best practices. I encourage them to go to other events.
(11:06):
Some of my team work on Super Bowls and work
on other large events and see how they improvise and
do things and implement also. And then what is the
goal and objective? You know, as we say, if it
doesn't make dollars, it doesn't make sense to do. We
don't do things for an exercise. We do things that
(11:26):
make money and bring pleasure to our customers. And if
it's making money but our customers don't like it, they
will vote with their feet and they won't come. So
we listen listened to them and take the feedback and
we adapt and then always innovate, you know, and you're
constantly having to a technology nowadays. And we're just getting
(11:48):
ready to do a whole revamp on the website and our,
our back office. We're re-implementing that and you've got to
keep going as to how, you know, CRM, we wrote
ours years ago. Well, now we're going to use one
that's more modern CRM, and you've got to constantly keep
putting money back into your company to keep it going
(12:11):
forward and make it so that it is easier for
the consumer to work with you.
S1 (12:18):
And when you look at lastly, I'll just talk a
little bit about how much you give back to the community.
You're very passionate about giving back. So with your charity,
with your charitable donations and the stuff you do activity
wise with your wife in the big picture of like
building into the community here in Arizona and around the world,
what are some of the things you're most passionate about
when it comes to giving back?
S2 (12:38):
Well, it's this started as a charity car show, and
it was to fund the Scottsdale Library and the Arts
in downtown Scottsdale. So a lot of the big art
you see in downtown Scottsdale was the arts committee back
in 71, 72, 73, actually back in the 60s before that.
But then that's when it all got purchased and put
(12:59):
into the library and all that, that whole civic center area.
Then my dad and my mom were on several different charities,
and that really has been part of Barrett Jackson. What
we look at is my brother died of colon cancer.
So we're big sponsors of Tgen. Um, we're very blessed
with the medical things that we have here. And, you know,
(13:23):
Barrow Mayo, those are big part. My wife chaired the
the heart ball. So we're very tied in with the
American Heart Association, our veterans. We're big supporters of our veterans,
and how can we make their lives better? And the
way we came across, I would say the secret sauce
(13:44):
is when we started working with the OEMs to get
the Vin number one cars donated and working with them.
JDRF is another one of our big charities. Or sell
a car Saturday night. The Vin number one dark horse
for Ford. So working with our corporate partners and aligning
our philanthropic desires and theirs, and we've raised $154 million
(14:08):
net for charity. We sell the cars. We don't take any, uh,
by fee. Sell fee. You write the check right to
the 501 C3. Then we donate VIP packages at charitable
events to come up and be in my skybox or
come up to an on location skybox. And. But it
(14:28):
also brings in new customers. When we're doing that, they
get a taste of what it's like to be at
Barrett Jackson. And if they like it, they get hooked.
S1 (14:35):
It's a system, right? It all feeds what you said.
Building connected businesses within the business that feed each other,
that feed each other.
S2 (14:42):
And in endeavor, they call it the flywheel. We didn't
come up with a name like that, but you got
all these different things that one needs to help the other,
not hurt the other. And they all need to flow together.
And that's that's the organization. And, you know, at times
I end up doing a lot of it. I didn't
have a COO for quite a while, and I was
(15:03):
doing ops and vision, which isn't always the best thing
and running day to day, but I'm fairly hands on,
but I might, as I say, I'm a person that's A.D.D.,
so I'll hands on and I'm focused on what's the
next thing, what's the next thing?
S1 (15:19):
Well, that's the job of a real entrepreneur is to
not be bogged down in doing the same thing. It's
to create the new thing, which I'm 82 and it's
it's a blessing to me because it is. I can
move on pretty easy.
S2 (15:29):
I hear interviews with Musk and I'm like, yeah, I
got that same bad trait.
S1 (15:35):
I think a lot of big entrepreneurs do because it's
what keeps us moving forward, right? And that lack of concentrating.
S2 (15:40):
It's also not wanting to get something. If you can't
figure something out, you just stay till you figure it out. Yeah.
And once you figure it out, it's like, ah, finally,
I'm not building rockets or anything like that. I'm building
a venue. But there's just different things that you try
to figure out and it doesn't work. You're like, what didn't?
(16:01):
Why didn't that work? And you, you I'm one of
those guys. I'm always thinking in my head, ten steps ahead. What?
How does this work? How do I figure it out?
How do I integrate? And if you're bogged down too
much in day to day, you can't do that. But
you need to not distance yourself from day to day,
keeping your finger on what's happening, getting, reporting, understanding, adapting
(16:22):
and changing. And that's what it takes over.
S1 (16:25):
The over the course of your whole career. Can you
think of one single moment where you thought to yourself,
oh shit, this is not going to be good? And
what did you do to overcome it?
S2 (16:36):
Well, there's a few, um, you know, we had a
huge storm here in 2010, and we I tracked it
on the computer all the way here, and we made
a lot of changes. And then one of my competitors, tinsel,
blew down. And, you know, about an hour before the
first wave, which the first wave was nothing compared to
the second wave. Second wave was 100 mile an hour winds. Wow.
(16:59):
And we had buttoned this place down and we never
went off live TV. We didn't lose one tent. Nothing
got injured because we planned. That's an event when you
have something happening. Bigger picture. Who would have thought about
Covid and that when you're in the live event business.
So we had to go strictly to digital and then
(17:21):
figure out how do we get back to live. And,
you know, now being an endeavor talking to Dana White,
how they did it and PBR, how they did it.
And when I first met with Ari, he's like, because
I met with Ari before Covid, and then I met
with him after. And he goes, I like entrepreneurs that
figured it out and still made good EBITDA that year.
(17:41):
So you're in.
S1 (17:41):
Great company with Ari and that team because you got
Dana at WWE. You got you. I mean, they've amassed
an enormous amount of iconic brand businesses with forward thinking
leaders that know how to build. I have the privilege
of working with some of those guys as well. Um,
and you are definitely in that arena. So I know
(18:02):
you've got a very busy week. I do. You've built
an incredible company. You've built your family's legacy. I know
they all would be very proud about what you've been
able to do and how you've built it even bigger
and better and positioned it for the future. I appreciate
you taking a little bit of time to come. Share
with my listeners and what it actually takes. Everything that
you talked about, I just so resonate with it. And
(18:24):
it's the thing that people struggle with. They get bogged
down and then they don't know what to do. Then
they get afraid and then they make bad decisions.
S2 (18:30):
And I would say to anybody, don't be afraid to fail.
If you fail, you figure it out. Don't go back
in your shell. If it you know, if something doesn't work,
you know, I listen to Musk on, you know, the
third rocket. If it didn't go, he was out. But
you got to have the tenacity to keep going forward.
But learning and figuring it out as you go and
just dusting yourself off and going, well, that sucked. Maybe
(18:54):
we won't do that the next time. Or why didn't it?
And we'll do it again. And that's the basic thing.
If you got to have the confidence in yourself to think,
I can figure it out and we will move ahead,
that's the bottom line of being an entrepreneur.
S1 (19:10):
Spoken from a true leader. Courageous. Resilient entrepreneur. That's what
it takes. Thank you for joining me on this episode
with Craig Jackson of Barrett Jackson of Building Billions with
Branden Dawson.
UU (19:21):
Thank you. Craig.
All right. Hey, it's Brandon Dawson here with another episode
of Building Billions. I am with the remarkable Craig Jackson
of Barrett Jackson. This is going to be a fun interview.
You know, all day long we interview entrepreneurs that have
created remarkable things. And this business, it's a global brand.
S2 (00:16):
People come from all around the world here, all around,
televised everywhere. So yes.
S1 (00:21):
A family business.
S2 (00:22):
It is a family business. Start as a family business
now I have partners, but yes, start as a family
business was a family business for 50 years.
S1 (00:31):
So now it's my second or third, second generation, second generation.
S2 (00:36):
My kids didn't want to run it, so I brought
partners in so that it'll have a much longer life
to it, hopefully forever. It's forever. It's a name brand.
S1 (00:45):
Absolutely. I mean, anywhere I go in the world, people
know the name Barrett Jackson and they all know it's
an exciting event. How fun is it to build a
business that's not only creates the economic opportunity to have
the life you want, but it's an iconic brand.
S2 (01:00):
You know, it was a lot of fun. Uh, you know,
being an entrepreneur. Every decision, you know, ends up at
my desk. And I always thought, what is best for
the brand? What is best for the hobby? This hobby
is my business. But it's both ways. So I care
very much about the brand and my customers and the cars. And, uh,
(01:26):
that's what our whole transparency and integrity and the cars
are what they need to be is as they're described.
And the experience when you come here needs to be
more than you expected. And that goes to the brand.
And the brand is number one. And my wife manages
the brand and she's very protective of it, as was
(01:50):
my mother. So I have that helping me.
S1 (01:54):
And so taking a family business, it's hard for the
first generation to build a successful business, but for the
second generation to step in and actually blow it up
and make it even a bigger version of itself and
get to work with your spouse. I work with Natalie,
my spouse, and we've been going on trips together, what,
probably ten years now? Yeah. And so seeing you guys together,
(02:14):
you're you're definitely a powerhouse and having your family and
your spouse to be able to work with you and
protect the brand, blow the brand up and really be
a steward of the future brand. Because you guys with
this transaction you've done is to lock in your legacy. Yes.
And to make sure it flourishes and prospers. What? When
(02:35):
you think of the next ten years, what excites you?
Just getting bigger or is there some other things that
excite you about this?
S3 (02:41):
Why?
S2 (02:41):
You know, I had quite a few suitors when we
had the investment bankers and brought some great companies. And
at the end of the day, it was all the
tentacles of WME, me. That is basically if you look
at everything in my business plan, and I told Ari,
Ari Emanuel that I'd met Mark McCormick 20 years ago
(03:05):
when he was doing the tennis tournament here. We shared
the same PR person, and he told me his philosophy,
and I go, that's a great philosophy. And that was diversification.
You control the brand and all the revenue streams off
of the brand, but that everything needs to complement everything
else as you build it out. So when you look
(03:28):
around here, we, we sell cars, but at the same
time we sell real estate. We're in the vendor business,
you know, we sell food and beverage. We have multiple
revenue streams. That all goes to the lifestyle. So the
decision early on and when I got into this when
I was a kid and I grew up learning from
(03:51):
basically running the trash cruise, to running the drivers, to
building the tents to computerizing the company back in the 80s,
early 80s when I took computer programming and I always
wanted to make things better, even though I was in
the third position, you know, fourth with my mother, but
(04:12):
my father, he fell ill with colon cancer. So I
started taking on more of the ops away from my
brother early on. So I got a taste of everything,
every segment of this company. Back when we only ran
one auction a year, we only had three employees plus
the family. So my assistant also booked all the travel.
(04:34):
And you really learn to do it from the boot
straps of a budget to, you know, you you run
one auction a year. I would restore cars the rest
of the year and sell them here. When my brother
fell sick, he got sick at Monterey and he died
six weeks later, so I had never planned on being
in the number one spot. I figured he'd run it forever.
(04:55):
I had other companies, some I probably shouldn't have sold.
I had a company where I wrote a computer program
to order food from the internet and deliver it to
your house. Oh, no. And I sold that, uh, pretty
lucrative business nowadays. But, uh, you know, I needed to
focus on Barrett Jackson. I said, I'll sell all my
other companies. I'm an entrepreneur at heart. I see something,
(05:19):
I see a niche. I don't see anybody doing anything.
All right, here's an opportunity. I was a bachelor, and
I didn't like to cook, so I said, all right,
we need a restaurant delivery company to your house, and
we should use the internet to do it. So I've
always been innovative, I think, and looking at how technology
can change things. So when I took over the company,
(05:40):
the first I had already put us on the internet
in 94 before my brother's passing in 95, we wrote
the first app to bid via the internet. Wow. Which
was way ahead of the curve. Uh, did online streaming.
Tying in online bidding, which was way ahead of the curve,
brought in live television. So from 96 to now, we've
(06:04):
been on live television. So my goal was, how do
you get out of a niche market into a much
broader mainstream market and bring new people into the hobby?
And that's basically been the formula. And then when they
get here, how do you entertain them all day long?
And I did that by asking my customers what they want.
(06:25):
And we made an announcement this morning based on input
from doing questionnaires, I did questionnaires, endeavor did questionnaires on
what your customers want. And we announced we're going to
do two scottsdale's we're going to do one in October,
and we're going to do one in January. And they
like the festival, the lifestyle more than they like just
(06:46):
going to a convention center.
S1 (06:49):
Yeah. It gives it gives people something to do. It
brings in a lot of people into into the marketplace here.
A lot of consumers. It's an environment. I mean, it's
to me it's Disneyland for adults. It is for car guys.
S2 (07:01):
I mean, it's part country. You know, it's part fair
with the fair food. It's high end. You know, we
have on location serving very high end luxury. So it's
we start off the week with family day. You know,
this year we added an element, we added foreigner. So
we added a concert to it. Then we went into
Family Day, which is all about getting youth involved. We
(07:23):
created a car show that is just for, uh, 80s
cars and up. So it's all getting influencers and YouTubers
to be the judges bring their cars. That was on Saturday.
We had 50 of the world's greatest hot rods in
the main auction arena. They're all going up for a
cash prizes, so it's slicing it into different demographics, different days,
(07:47):
different things to do. It's not always the same thing
and we program it. You've got live music down on
one end. Down here. This is the place to sit
and watch all the cars come across the auction block.
You've got 140 some food vendors on property, anything you
want to eat. So if you come here, you can
(08:08):
spend the whole day. And every day is a little
bit different. The types of cars, the prices, the ancillary
things that are going on.
S1 (08:16):
And it's a it's a family environment. Little kids can
be here. They love it. They get to see all
this amazing stuff. You know, being an iconic brand builder. Right.
So which is what what you are you innovated a
family business to be in an iconic brand that has
the systems, the people, the operations. It's a hard step
for most entrepreneurs to make because they get stuck in
(08:38):
just doing the same thing over and over and over.
S2 (08:40):
I'm bored. So full disclosure, I'm extremely A.D.D.. As my
wife says, I would get bored in an avalanche.
S1 (08:47):
So that's a good thing.
S2 (08:48):
Though, right? I don't do the same thing every day. Um,
you know, it's it gets monotonous. And I don't like monotony.
I like structure, but I like creativity. And people around
me that think outside the box. And how we debrief
a debrief after every auction is not to be taken
(09:09):
personally that I'm picking on how can we do things better?
What's the feedback from the customers? How do we improve
the systems, and then what should we add to it?
S1 (09:18):
Yeah, the tenacity for the client journey, right. The the experience,
the overall experience. What I find with a lot of
businesses that struggle is the business owner gets so consumed
doing the work, they don't actually have the headspace or
time to maintain that level of tenacity. And then the
discipline with the team to understand it's not personal. It's
part of the brand experience that we're trying to build.
(09:39):
When you think about your leadership because there's there's several
things you're known for in this community, not only building
an iconic brand. You and I have been going on
charitable organizations for, I don't know, ten, 12 years together.
You're a huge proponent of charitable and giving back. And,
and then the leadership position that you've been able to
take with moving thousands and thousands of people around the
(10:02):
world because you move your show around to what what
in your mind, if you were to narrow it down?
For entrepreneurs listening to this, what would you say is
the top three things as a business owner, that you
should stay focused on making sure you do in order
for your business to become like your business, an iconic experience.
S2 (10:20):
You know there's so many, but your your core, you
got to build a great team around you. You have
to learn to delegate. But check in, don't check out, uh, train.
Great people. I have some people who've been with me. 30.
The number one employee, 38 years. Wow. Uh, my ops
guy here is going on 35 years. Train them. Let
(10:43):
them do their thing. Uh, now I walk around, I
see stuff, I bring it up, you know, and they're like, yep.
Saw that. Usually they've seen the same thing and we adapt.
And you know, when weather changes or rain's coming, you adapt.
So building out a great team, going to other events.
And for me it's going to other events and seeing
best practices. I encourage them to go to other events.
(11:06):
Some of my team work on Super Bowls and work
on other large events and see how they improvise and
do things and implement also. And then what is the
goal and objective? You know, as we say, if it
doesn't make dollars, it doesn't make sense to do. We
don't do things for an exercise. We do things that
(11:26):
make money and bring pleasure to our customers. And if
it's making money but our customers don't like it, they
will vote with their feet and they won't come. So
we listen listened to them and take the feedback and
we adapt and then always innovate, you know, and you're
constantly having to a technology nowadays. And we're just getting
(11:48):
ready to do a whole revamp on the website and our,
our back office. We're re-implementing that and you've got to
keep going as to how, you know, CRM, we wrote
ours years ago. Well, now we're going to use one
that's more modern CRM, and you've got to constantly keep
putting money back into your company to keep it going
(12:11):
forward and make it so that it is easier for
the consumer to work with you.
S1 (12:18):
And when you look at lastly, I'll just talk a
little bit about how much you give back to the community.
You're very passionate about giving back. So with your charity,
with your charitable donations and the stuff you do activity
wise with your wife in the big picture of like
building into the community here in Arizona and around the world,
what are some of the things you're most passionate about
when it comes to giving back?
S2 (12:38):
Well, it's this started as a charity car show, and
it was to fund the Scottsdale Library and the Arts
in downtown Scottsdale. So a lot of the big art
you see in downtown Scottsdale was the arts committee back
in 71, 72, 73, actually back in the 60s before that.
But then that's when it all got purchased and put
(12:59):
into the library and all that, that whole civic center area.
Then my dad and my mom were on several different charities,
and that really has been part of Barrett Jackson. What
we look at is my brother died of colon cancer.
So we're big sponsors of Tgen. Um, we're very blessed
with the medical things that we have here. And, you know,
(13:23):
Barrow Mayo, those are big part. My wife chaired the
the heart ball. So we're very tied in with the
American Heart Association, our veterans. We're big supporters of our veterans,
and how can we make their lives better? And the
way we came across, I would say the secret sauce
(13:44):
is when we started working with the OEMs to get
the Vin number one cars donated and working with them.
JDRF is another one of our big charities. Or sell
a car Saturday night. The Vin number one dark horse
for Ford. So working with our corporate partners and aligning
our philanthropic desires and theirs, and we've raised $154 million
(14:08):
net for charity. We sell the cars. We don't take any, uh,
by fee. Sell fee. You write the check right to
the 501 C3. Then we donate VIP packages at charitable
events to come up and be in my skybox or
come up to an on location skybox. And. But it
(14:28):
also brings in new customers. When we're doing that, they
get a taste of what it's like to be at
Barrett Jackson. And if they like it, they get hooked.
S1 (14:35):
It's a system, right? It all feeds what you said.
Building connected businesses within the business that feed each other,
that feed each other.
S2 (14:42):
And in endeavor, they call it the flywheel. We didn't
come up with a name like that, but you got
all these different things that one needs to help the other,
not hurt the other. And they all need to flow together.
And that's that's the organization. And, you know, at times
I end up doing a lot of it. I didn't
have a COO for quite a while, and I was
(15:03):
doing ops and vision, which isn't always the best thing
and running day to day, but I'm fairly hands on,
but I might, as I say, I'm a person that's A.D.D.,
so I'll hands on and I'm focused on what's the
next thing, what's the next thing?
S1 (15:19):
Well, that's the job of a real entrepreneur is to
not be bogged down in doing the same thing. It's
to create the new thing, which I'm 82 and it's
it's a blessing to me because it is. I can
move on pretty easy.
S2 (15:29):
I hear interviews with Musk and I'm like, yeah, I
got that same bad trait.
S1 (15:35):
I think a lot of big entrepreneurs do because it's
what keeps us moving forward, right? And that lack of concentrating.
S2 (15:40):
It's also not wanting to get something. If you can't
figure something out, you just stay till you figure it out. Yeah.
And once you figure it out, it's like, ah, finally,
I'm not building rockets or anything like that. I'm building
a venue. But there's just different things that you try
to figure out and it doesn't work. You're like, what didn't?
(16:01):
Why didn't that work? And you, you I'm one of
those guys. I'm always thinking in my head, ten steps ahead. What?
How does this work? How do I figure it out?
How do I integrate? And if you're bogged down too
much in day to day, you can't do that. But
you need to not distance yourself from day to day,
keeping your finger on what's happening, getting, reporting, understanding, adapting
(16:22):
and changing. And that's what it takes over.
S1 (16:25):
The over the course of your whole career. Can you
think of one single moment where you thought to yourself,
oh shit, this is not going to be good? And
what did you do to overcome it?
S2 (16:36):
Well, there's a few, um, you know, we had a
huge storm here in 2010, and we I tracked it
on the computer all the way here, and we made
a lot of changes. And then one of my competitors, tinsel,
blew down. And, you know, about an hour before the
first wave, which the first wave was nothing compared to
the second wave. Second wave was 100 mile an hour winds. Wow.
(16:59):
And we had buttoned this place down and we never
went off live TV. We didn't lose one tent. Nothing
got injured because we planned. That's an event when you
have something happening. Bigger picture. Who would have thought about
Covid and that when you're in the live event business.
So we had to go strictly to digital and then
(17:21):
figure out how do we get back to live. And,
you know, now being an endeavor talking to Dana White,
how they did it and PBR, how they did it.
And when I first met with Ari, he's like, because
I met with Ari before Covid, and then I met
with him after. And he goes, I like entrepreneurs that
figured it out and still made good EBITDA that year.
(17:41):
So you're in.
S1 (17:41):
Great company with Ari and that team because you got
Dana at WWE. You got you. I mean, they've amassed
an enormous amount of iconic brand businesses with forward thinking
leaders that know how to build. I have the privilege
of working with some of those guys as well. Um,
and you are definitely in that arena. So I know
(18:02):
you've got a very busy week. I do. You've built
an incredible company. You've built your family's legacy. I know
they all would be very proud about what you've been
able to do and how you've built it even bigger
and better and positioned it for the future. I appreciate
you taking a little bit of time to come. Share
with my listeners and what it actually takes. Everything that
you talked about, I just so resonate with it. And
(18:24):
it's the thing that people struggle with. They get bogged
down and then they don't know what to do. Then
they get afraid and then they make bad decisions.
S2 (18:30):
And I would say to anybody, don't be afraid to fail.
If you fail, you figure it out. Don't go back
in your shell. If it you know, if something doesn't work,
you know, I listen to Musk on, you know, the
third rocket. If it didn't go, he was out. But
you got to have the tenacity to keep going forward.
But learning and figuring it out as you go and
just dusting yourself off and going, well, that sucked. Maybe
(18:54):
we won't do that the next time. Or why didn't it?
And we'll do it again. And that's the basic thing.
If you got to have the confidence in yourself to think,
I can figure it out and we will move ahead,
that's the bottom line of being an entrepreneur.
S1 (19:10):
Spoken from a true leader. Courageous. Resilient entrepreneur. That's what
it takes. Thank you for joining me on this episode
with Craig Jackson of Barrett Jackson of Building Billions with
Branden Dawson.
UU (19:21):
Thank you. Craig.
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