September 4, 2025 • 36 mins
What does it take to transform diverse experiences into entrepreneurial success? Jim Kelly's remarkable journey from politics to building a billion-dollar travel reservation system provides a masterclass in strategic career maneuvers and meaningful risk-taking.
Through this candid conversation, Kelly reveals the delicate art of finding mentors—not by asking vague questions about what to do with your life, but by approaching them with specific requests that inspire their guidance. This small distinction makes all the difference in cultivating relationships that propel careers forward.
Kelly's entrepreneurial story defies conventional timelines, having launched his tech company in his fifties during the early days of the internet. His innovative approach to hotel reservations—offering software for free while charging half the industry rate per completed transaction—revolutionized the space. The strategy that secured MGM Grand as a client and subsequently opened the entire Las Vegas market demonstrates how strategic thinking and clear storytelling turn vision into reality.
Perhaps most valuable is Kelly's insight about team building: "With the right team, you can do anything." This wisdom, particularly relevant for startups where only 2% survive, offers a roadmap for building organizations primed for success.
Ready to make your own daring choices? Kelly's experiences illuminate how skills accumulated across various fields create the foundation for innovation and leadership.
Purchase Daring Choices: Stories From An International Life in Politics, Business, and Technology
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Steven Ruffing (00:01):
Welcome to the Tomorrow's World Today podcast.
We sit down with experts,world-changing innovators,
creators, and makers to explorehow they're taking action to
make tomorrow's world a betterplace for technology, science,
innovation, sustainability, thearts, and more.
George M. Davison (00:18):
Hello, everybody, and welcome to
another edition of Tomorrow'sWorld Today.
And today we have a specialguest.
His name is Jim Kelly.
Welcome, Jim.
Thank you.
Good to be here.
Well, Jim's had a successfullife in business, technology,
and in politics.
And at one time, he was in theReagan administration.
He's also built a company fromscratch.
(00:39):
It's called SynexisCorporation.
And it is actually a travelreservation system that's now
around the globe.
But today, he's become abest-selling author on Amazon.
Congratulations.
Thank you.
Yeah.
So I'm hoping today you'regoing to share some of your
stories with us that are in yourbook called Dare choices.
(01:01):
And I mean, you've really hadan interesting journey.
So I was hoping you could sharewith our audience today, you
know, why have you collected allthese stories on your life and
put them in this book for us?
Jim Kelly (01:15):
Well, let's start with how it happened.
First of all, I grew up inPittsburgh and I returned here
in 2017.
And by chance, I had a dinnerwith a guy named Max King, who's
pretty well known inPittsburgh.
He'd been head of thePittsburgh Foundation, but at
one time he'd been an editor ofthe Philadelphia Inquirer.
(01:37):
I told him a couple of mystories and he said, Jim, you
got to write a book about this.
I said, well, Max, let me thinkabout that.
So at the time, part of thereason why I returned to
Pittsburgh was I was anexecutive in residence at the
University of Pittsburgh KatzGraduate School of Business.
And students would frequentlyask me I tried to give examples
(02:03):
of things that I had experiencedin my business career and as
ways that they could look atwhat they were trying to do.
And the question always cameup, why did this happen?
How did you do this?
And why did you do this?
So I thought about that and Ithought about what Max had said
to me.
And then I guess it was acouple months later, I ran into
(02:28):
him.
He had written the book, I'mMr.
Rogers.
And at the release, he said,how's your book coming?
I said, well, I haven't startedyet.
He said, get busy.
So...
When a man of that stature andexperience tells you you better
sit down and try and write abook, I got started.
George M. Davison (02:52):
So
Jim Kelly (02:52):
your listening
George M. Davison (02:53):
skills were still intact.
Yeah.
Well, I follow orders.
That's all right.
I think at the bottom of thehour, though, we're going to
want to figure out why youselected these stories and you
put them together for anaudience because you wouldn't
likely want to help some peoplealong the way, didn't you?
Jim Kelly (03:14):
Well, I really was interested in showing how one
thing leads to another in life.
A lot of people, I think, tendto engage in one thing and they
stick with it and some becomevery good at it, others don't.
But some people learn from thatexperience and they apply it to
(03:38):
the next door, so to speak, thenext road in their life.
And I think a lot of youngpeople have a fear of not trying
things that may prove to be notonly outside their envelope,
but very difficult.
So I try to show here that itis not necessarily easy, but if
(04:04):
it's handled with some degree offinesse and you're careful
about how you do it, you canchange from one thing to another
in your life.
And you can try and have a lotof different experiences, which
in the end should turn out to befun, as they were for me.
Yes,
George M. Davison (04:24):
you had a very active life there for quite
a bit, building all thesethings.
Jim Kelly (04:29):
So I had a lot of luck too.
I had a lot of people thathelped along the way.
And that's another thing thatI've encouraged young people to
do is to gather around thempeople that they can look to as
mentors in their career, intheir life going forward.
(04:51):
And I had that with people likeElsie Hellman here in
Pittsburgh, who's well-knownhere, Drew Lewis from the
eastern part of the state, andin my technical career with a
guy named Dave Huebner, who hadbeen in the Defense Department
and head of the ResearchDepartment of the Defense
(05:13):
Department.
So
George M. Davison (05:16):
somehow or another, Jim, you became
comfortable in what I refer toas the uncomfortable.
And going out, meeting peoplethat you don't know, there's an
art and a system to doing that.
And I think a lot of ouraudience probably is very
unfamiliar with that.
Many of them may also be shy,but they, who knows, they may
(05:38):
want to pursue a career as anentrepreneur or to excel in the
business or political world.
How did you find that younavigated into this initially?
How did How did you become soconfident that going up to
meeting strangers who you knewcould be influential in your
(06:00):
career, what convinced you thatthat was a good idea to do, to
create these mentors?
Jim Kelly (06:06):
Well, there's no question but that I am an
introvert, which a lot of peopleask me, how does an introvert
do the things that you'vedecided to do?
And that's a...
It's just hard work.
And you've got to be willing toput yourself out there.
(06:29):
And if I can go back to MaxKing for a second, I asked Max,
I said, Max, with all yourwisdom in life, tell me, why do
you think this happened to me?
And he said, well, you putyourself out there.
And that's the real lesson ofthis book.
Whether it's, I mean, I giveyou one example.
(06:51):
I was a project engineer inSpain.
I was home on vacation.
I met Elsie Hellman.
I said, you know, Elsie, I'vealways been interested in
politics.
I said, do you think I might,this was in 1968 when things
were kind of on edge, and to putit bluntly and lightly, but she
said, have you thought abouttrying to help out here in the
(07:14):
political situation?
I said, no, I hadn't really.
She said, well, give it somethought, and if you'd like me to
help you with it, I'd be gladto do that.
And so the same thing happenedwith Drew Lewis, my other
mentor, who was theTransportation Secretary in the
Reagan administration.
one day asked me, he said, youknow, you seem to know a lot
(07:38):
about the internationalbusiness.
Mack Baldrige is looking forsomebody like you.
Would you be willing to give ita try?
I said, yeah.
So I put myself out there andsaid, yeah, I'll do that.
Next thing I know, I wassitting there with Mack
Baldrige.
George M. Davison (07:54):
And so that is a big part of the equation,
isn't it?
Absolutely.
Being able to put yourself outthere, give yourself an
opportunity to expand yourself,maybe your knowledge.
And people have that ability todo it.
It's not just anybody.
It's, for example, if you're inan area that you don't have
(08:15):
some mentors that you feel arestrong individuals, be patient.
Try to find, you know, goodmentors.
Try to put yourself, surroundyourself with good people who
can help you grow.
Is that a fair way to say it?
Yes, indeed.
Yeah.
I think that's a key part ofthis because a lot of folks
Maybe they grew up in a badfamily environment.
(08:39):
Maybe they're in an area oftown that's not all that
wonderful.
They haven't been exposed to alot of good things.
So getting them to thinkdifferently about how to get out
of that situation.
And you
Jim Kelly (08:54):
can go out and find mentors, right?
You can.
And there's an importantelement of this.
A lot of people in search of amentor go to someone that they
know.
they think can be a mentor andthey ask the question, what do
you think I should do with mylife?
And that doesn't work.
Mentors, prospective mentorsdon't respond to that very well.
George M. Davison (09:17):
The
Jim Kelly (09:18):
question should be, I would like to try this or this
is what I would like to do.
Can you help me do this?
And all the people I know thathave become serious mentors of
other people have always pitchedin.
When they're given a clearquestion, a request, they will
(09:45):
jump to be of help.
But if you go to them and say,what should I do with my life?
That will not carry the day.
Right.
George M. Davison (09:55):
So that's good advice.
Very good advice for theaudience today.
You know, you said in your bookthat you wanted to help
students try to figure outwhat's ahead of them.
And I was thinking on that.
And, you know, that falls intothe category of, you know,
having a noble cause, you know.
(10:15):
And now today you're out heretalking about your life and the
stories that have helped toshape you, compose it into a
book.
Is that what motivates you,chasing noble cause to try and
do some things that are betterfor others?
Never heard it put that way,but probably true.
That's the way I interpreted itwhen I read that.
Jim Kelly (10:38):
In one of the companies where I worked, BDM,
we had a saying, do things thatcount.
And that's another kind oflesson that I've tried to pass
on to students and youngerpeople that I've worked with.
that when you think about yourlife and the things that you're
(11:01):
doing, make sure that whateveryou do, do it well and make sure
that it counts for other peopleand for their future as well as
yours.
Yeah,
George M. Davison (11:14):
it hasn't been easy, has it?
In the book, there are momentsin there where you were
challenged pretty seriously.
Bad hiring from one angle thatcould have gone you into some
challenges, right?
Yes.
And you had to make some toughchoices and take on the board
and push your way forward.
But you were on the side ofwhat was right.
(11:38):
What was the right thing to do,right?
It's not always easy.
Jim Kelly (11:42):
Well, that takes me to another kind of observation.
When I've spoken to a number ofbusiness classes, I ask them, I
say, what's most important?
Is the investment investor, thecustomer, or the employee.
And invariably, the businessstudents will tell me it's the
(12:05):
investor or it is the customer.
They kind of forget about theemployee.
And I've always said that withthe right team, you can do
anything.
And so life is really aboutbringing together the right
people.
And there was a book that wascalled Good to Great, Getting
(12:26):
getting all the right people onthe bus, in the right seats on
the bus, going in the rightdirection.
And I think that's an importantlesson.
And one step beyond that isimportant that when you have
someone who is not a part of theteam or who is working against
(12:47):
the team, you need to changethat person very quickly.
And what I've seen is that mostpersonnel decisions are made
too far down the road, that youneed to make personnel decisions
the minute you know that youneed to make that change.
And this is true.
in many instances with peoplewho start companies.
(13:10):
Companies or new ventures areusually started between a couple
of friends.
George M. Davison (13:16):
And
Jim Kelly (13:17):
one of the friends ends up driving the train, the
other one kind of along for theride.
That shouldn't last very long.
And it's a very importantlesson because only 2% or so of
the startups survive.
So one of those reasons is thatnot everybody's on the same
page when it comes to completingtheir assignment.
(13:39):
Right, couldn't agree more.
George M. Davison (13:41):
So just to give you some leeway here, I
wanted to ask you if you couldtell us about your life of
turning dreams into goals andthen into results.
Jim Kelly (13:54):
Well, during my business career, not so much the
political activities that Iundertook, I paid attention to
the people above me.
And at some point, oddlyenough, it was in my early 50s,
(14:16):
I didn't say I know it all, butI concluded that I knew enough
that I could start a business.
And it just, Providence, Iguess, it just happened that
that was the beginning of theinternet.
And so I said to myself, I'mgoing to now use all the things
(14:39):
that I learned to start abusiness I have no idea what
that business is going to dowhich surprises a lot of people.
And I'm going to bring togetherthat team that I just spoke
about, and we're going to makeit happen.
So we started in a businesswhich was putting the Yellow
(14:59):
Pages online, which was abusiness that gave us the money
to then enter into the hotelreservation space.
And the hotel reservation spacecame about because I was told
precisely what the problem wasby the reservation manager of
one of the major hotel groups.
(15:21):
And the rest is kind ofhistory.
We made that product over aperiod of five or six years.
And it's now that company was,I think, recently sold for over
a billion dollars.
So that's the transition fromthe thought process to
accumulating the team that ittakes to do the job and then
(15:45):
actually doing the job andtaking the product to market.
George M. Davison (15:51):
It's interesting because you started
as an entrepreneur but you werein your 50s which is unusual.
It's interesting from anotherangle too because you spent so
much time in that politicalarena but you were exposed to a
lot of accomplished folks andyou traveled a lot.
I'd say there's one othercritical piece to the equation
(16:11):
and that is you have to besearching and making
observations.
And in your case, I'mwondering, does that mean that
at the age of 50 something, youwere saying to yourself, I'm not
quite fulfilled.
I want to become anentrepreneur and I'm going to
venture out of the politicallandscape and start going in
(16:31):
this other direction.
Was it like that?
Was it that clear?
Or was it because you do talkabout that in the book, but just
can you expand on that a littlebit, that moment in time of
working for someone else becauseyou were in the government?
But working for somebody else,and actually you were working
for another organization, whichis BDM.
(16:53):
You had them and you wereworking with them.
But there was something thatmust have transitioned you to
say, no, I'm going to go out andgo on my own.
That
Jim Kelly (17:03):
is a good question, George.
And I want to take it back tothere is a point in time where I
was asked to join a company andthey asked me to take an
assignment of acquiringcompanies for them in Europe.
Because I'd had businessexperience in Europe, but I had
never been in the acquisitionworld.
(17:24):
So I said, all right, I'll dothis, but I need to understand
acquisition accounting.
So they agreed to send me tothe University of Michigan for a
two-month course in acquisitionaccounting.
And I went to Europe andreviewed over 200 companies, and
we acquired a few of those.
And so each of the things thatI did, there was...
(17:49):
piece of the puzzle that I madea concerted effort to acquire
what I thought I was missing.
And one of the things that Ipoint to in the political side
and particularly working at ahigh level in the
administration, the Reaganadministration, was that I
learned to write.
(18:10):
I mean, I knew how to write.
I had worked for a senator andhe was an excellent writer and
his administrative assistant wasa former newspaper editor.
So I had the basics.
But Secretary Baldrige was areal stickler about writing.
So I learned there how to writeand how to make a business
(18:30):
presentation.
With that, again, I felt I hadanother piece that I could carry
forward in building a business.
And it's kind of all thesethings that I acquired in my
career that came together forthe purpose of starting a
company.
George M. Davison (18:49):
So the art of writing helps to get the story
out as to what you're trying toaccomplish.
Is that
Jim Kelly (18:56):
why?
Absolutely.
More than that, thepresentations, the PowerPoint
presentations, I worry aboutyoung people being able to write
now because we see what'shappened with email and
(19:16):
autocorrect and so forth.
Writing is the definitely arequired skill of success.
Definitely.
I say that people should read,they should write, and they
should write well.
George M. Davison (19:31):
I agree with you.
And I'd take it a step furtherbecause you made another comment
earlier about how you took adifferent type of accounting,
financial acquisition.
So it's writing and telling agood story, but also you have to
be able to, in this case, yousaid make acquisitions, but also
you're going to go and raisemoney, aren't you?
Jim Kelly (19:52):
Yes.
George M. Davison (19:53):
In order to raise money, you really need to
understand money.
Yes.
So that's another importantingredient.
Jim Kelly (19:59):
You have to be able to understand money, but you
also have to be good atstorytelling.
You have to be able to tell thestory of what's happening to
the money in a way that peopleunderstand more than the
numbers.
The money has something beforeit and after it.
(20:20):
And you need to build that intoa story.
George M. Davison (20:23):
So initially you had to raise money to get
this off the ground.
I think it was 400,000 is whereyou started.
And you went through a methodto do that, meeting with people
and telling the story of whatyou wanted.
Can you walk us back in time alittle bit so that this audience
can relate to that moment wherethe internet was coming into
(20:47):
place and you had your area ofknowledge you had a customer who
was in that field of doingsomething with hotels told you
about this problem that wasgoing on and you looked at that
and said i think with technologyand with the right programming
we could we could turn that intoa business and we could scale
(21:10):
that that.
So can you talk a little bitabout what was going on at that
moment in time?
And then I'm going to ask youto walk us forward and give us a
few stories that might bereally compelling for the
audience to know about thatreally were critical stepping
stones that let the company moveinto a more stable financial
(21:34):
position.
Because you had to raise money,I think, a couple of times.
Jim Kelly (21:37):
Yes.
Oh, yes.
Yeah.
We, from a technologystandpoint, two things were
happening at that moment thatwe, I won't say that we were
first because I'm sure therewere others out there, but we
presented our product assoftware as a service, S-A-A-S,
which has become rathercommonplace now.
(21:59):
But at that time, having thecompany hold the software and
putting a graphic user face infront of the customer and
saying, go to it, that was veryunusual.
Secondly, we charged on atransaction basis, which was
unusual.
Most of the reservations were,they were provided for in a
(22:21):
software package.
You bought the software and youran it and then you figured out
what your costs per reservationwere.
We only charged on a completedreservation.
So we could give, we gave thesoftware away.
We said, here it is, it'syours, it's free, but you owe
and we cut the price of softwarereservations in half.
(22:45):
And so people were absolutelykeen to use it.
And there's one moment.
George M. Davison (22:54):
Can I pause you for a moment?
So in other words, a thing thatwas going on, this is a
critical moment where there'ssomething else in the
marketplace and it's kind ofset.
You have to buy it.
You have to have a learningcurve.
You go through this process.
Right.
The old saying is, if you cangive it to them for free, that's
(23:43):
a pretty powerful motivator.
So you did figure that out.
Oh, yes.
Okay, so that's a very criticalpart of your innovation.
What are a few of the otherones?
Jim Kelly (23:53):
Well, I wanted to give you one of the stories
where everything very quicklytransitioned.
I went to, we had a fellow whowas head of strategy, and he
said, you know, he said, we'vegot to be looking at Las Vegas.
So I'd never been to Las Vegas.
So somehow or another, I got ameeting with the president of
(24:15):
the MGM Grand Hotel, which isthe largest hotel in the world
with 5,000 rooms.
So I go into his office and I'mat the table.
It's a big table.
And across the table from me ishis head of IT, therefore the
guy that runs his reservationsystem.
So it's a mano a mano.
(24:35):
And I did the best I could.
I explained what our system wasand what it was going to cost
him, nothing.
And the guy across the tabledidn't really have much to say.
So MGM adopted the system.
And then every hotel in LasVegas had to have the same thing
(24:56):
that MGM had in order to defendthemselves in that really
basically tiny market.
So that moved us ahead.
From then on, it was our game.
Yeah, that's wonderful.
George M. Davison (25:10):
I love that story.
It shows you how to move.
And it gives you an example ofhow to think strategically and
move your product or service sothat you can get adaptability,
right?
How do you get absorption ofwhat you've created?
Because there's a lot of greatinnovation in the world, but it
just never really gets afoothold in the door long enough
(25:32):
to survive.
Jim Kelly (25:33):
Yeah, remember, it's that part about you got to tell
a story.
You know, it's the story.
And the story for us goingforward was always it's going to
cost you half as much as anyother hotel to use our
reservation system and you'regoing to have more people
staying at your hotel and soforth and so on.
(25:54):
But it was all put together ina story.
George M. Davison (25:57):
And it all happened because you put
yourself in a position toidentify a problem that you
thought you could solve.
Jim Kelly (26:06):
Well, it goes back to the fellow who said I I need to
be able to sell my last room.
So the reason- Can you explainthat a little more for
George M. Davison (26:15):
the audience?
Jim Kelly (26:17):
The reason, it's a bit complicated, but in the
travel world, there are what'scalled GDS, Global Distribution
System.
And GDS is Backstop TravelAgents.
And so there are four mainGDSs, the best known is Sabre.
And Sabre was created byAmerican Airlines.
(26:39):
they provide a list of all thehotels and aircraft and car
rentals.
And most travel agents areconnected with one of those
GDSs, but this travel agent mayhave, say, a wedding.
So he books his allocation ofrooms in a hotel through his
(27:02):
GDS, say, at Sabre.
Anybody who goes to him willshow that his booking path is
complete.
There are no more rooms.
And anybody who's workingthrough that particular GDS may
find that all the rooms arebooked.
However, the hotel hasallocated rooms to the other
(27:25):
GDSs.
So other travel agents that areworking through the other GDSs
have rooms that they can sell.
So you've probably encountereda situation where you went one
way on the internet and youfound that the that the hotel
had no rooms.
You went another way and youfound that there were plenty of
(27:45):
rooms available.
We combined the GDSs so thatyou had a complete picture and
it was expensive process.
In those days, it was $100,000for joining that GDS.
So we put the four together,that was $400,000 right off the
top.
And once we did that, then wecould assure you that you're
(28:07):
looking at the entire inventoryof the hotel, which goes back to
the preservation manager whoasked me, who told me, I can't
sell my last room.
We made it possible for him toshow all of his rooms to the
customers and thereby sell thelast room.
And that's a wonderfulinnovation.
George M. Davison (28:26):
So in other words, you took all the separate
parts, put them under one.
So everything was talking toeach other instead of having
them in silos.
And then the hotel owner endsup with these empty rooms, which
in turn leads to a lot of lessopportunity, right?
From an entrepreneur'sperspective.
Identifying all those littleneeds and problems inside
(28:51):
existing business models is a,you know, well, we know the
story of other entrepreneurswho've been outrageously
successful looking atcorporations and the needs that
they have.
That's how a lot of innovationlaunches.
Jim Kelly (29:04):
I have to believe that's a part of your business
here, that all of the innovationwork that you're doing is in
response to some express needsomewhere along the way.
Yes.
George M. Davison (29:16):
I mean, Tomorrow's World Today is an
example.
You mentioned storytelling,right?
Well, storytelling in the fieldof, it doesn't matter if you're
Caterpillar or Microsoft or anyof the other partners that have
been on our shows, they aredeveloping fantastic technology.
But the art of getting thestory out, you could be a
(29:37):
multi-billion dollar company andyet you still struggle on how
to shape that story to anaudience.
And so it's a real art that is,the way we refer to it, you do
your inventing, then you do yourmaking, and then you do your
storytelling.
And so we combine those three,kind of the way you've combined
the silos.
(29:58):
We've combined those threesilos into one compact unit.
But I thought another thingthat might be of interest to our
audience today would be Youknow, if you were able to sit
down one-on-one with youngerpeople who are trying to figure
(30:18):
out their journey in life, it'sjust like we all did.
You know, we're in high school.
We're not sure where we'regoing.
We're just facing, there's thisdeadline approaching where it's
parents are going to want youout of the house.
They're going to want you outon your own, supporting
yourself, growing up to be anadult.
And that clock is ticking andyou're Where am I going?
(30:40):
How am I figuring out thislife?
And that stress moment is whatI think could be very helpful
for our audience to understand.
First of all, we all go throughit, but it might be nice to
hear, like if you were talkingone-on-one with one of your own
children and trying to help themget ready to navigate that part
(31:01):
of their life, what might besome of the advice you would
Jim Kelly (31:05):
give?
Part of the apple doesn't fallfar from the tree myself.
My son is a travel advisor.
But I've done this many times.
I've talked to a lot of youngpeople, both at Pitt, but in
Washington and in startups andwhat have you.
When I sit down with someone,the first question I have for
(31:29):
them is, what do you like to do?
And I've had situations whereone particular guy came to me
and he said, what do you think Ishould do?
I said, that's not for me tosay, but what I'd like to know
is what do you like to do?
He said, well, I really like togo surfing.
(31:52):
He said, you know, I like theoutdoors.
I said, so what's keeping youfrom it?
And he said, well, what do youmean?
And I said, you know, there's athousand different jobs that
you could find that would payyou to do what you love to do.
And by gosh, he went out andwound up working in a surfboard
(32:15):
company and is making a handyliving.
And he's a very happy guy.
But that's the story I tellyoung people is that, look, do
what you really want to do.
And, you know, in my case,growing up, I was just very
interested in the internationalworld.
And I made a decision to go tothe International Graduate
(32:37):
School in Arizona.
And it worked out for me.
But do what you really want todo, not just because you've got
to go out and make a buck andget out of the house.
Right.
And almost anything, you canmake money.
Anything.
All right.
(32:58):
So
George M. Davison (32:59):
this next question is a little different.
But what are some of the thingsthat you will share with us?
that you never expected as anentrepreneur, but somehow it
makes perfect sense to you now.
Jim Kelly (33:14):
Oh boy, that's something that I never expected.
You know, I hate to say this,but one of the things that you
try to do is you try to lookforward and catch everything
that's coming.
I've relied pretty heavily onmy intuition about people.
In a few instances, I wassorely disappointed.
(33:39):
And people who I thought fitthe bill for whatever it was
that happened, really didn't, Iwas totally thrown by that.
And in a couple of instances,it caused huge board fights and
so forth.
One individual who I releasedcame back to me later and he
(34:05):
said, you know, he said, it wasactually good for that to happen
to me.
And he said, the worst part ofit was I let you down.
I said, well, you know, I letyou down too by bringing you
into a situation where youcouldn't perform.
So everything goes back topeople.
You know, everything in thisworld goes back to people and
(34:29):
how you treat people and how youwork with people and how you
motivate people.
That's what it all amounts to.
Yeah.
Like you said, get them on the
George M. Davison (34:41):
right seat and the right bus going in the
right direction.
That's right,
Jim Kelly (34:47):
yeah.
Yeah.
Those were a couple, probablytwo or three, and I wrote about
it in the book.
There are two or three misfiresthat I made at the What a big
surprise to me.
George M. Davison (35:01):
So you have our audience here and, you know,
I can speak up for the book.
It's got some really goodstories in there from an
entrepreneur's perspective, atleast from my angle of reading
the book.
There's a lot of good lessonsin there.
What other things would youlike to share with the audience
personally today that you mightlike to get across?
Jim Kelly (35:23):
Well, I do hope that people, and in particular,
younger people who are trying tosort out their careers will
take a look at this book andread through some of the stories
because it will help you answerthe question of how to go about
doing what you like to do andhow to be successful in that
(35:47):
mission.
That's it.
George M. Davison (35:50):
I think you've demonstrated you're true
to your cause because I knowyou're trying to do that in this
book.
So thank you for sharing yourinsights today.
There's of course, a lot morein that book that we can't cover
today.
But thank you for sharing bitsand pieces of these stories and
for putting yourself out there,Jim.
Thank you, George.
(36:10):
It's been a pleasure.
Well, everybody, that's anotheredition of Tomorrow's World
Today.
Bye now.
Steven Ruffing (36:17):
Thank you for listening to this episode of
Tomorrow's World Today podcast.
Join us next time as wecontinue to explore the worlds
of inspiration, creation,innovation, and production.
Discover more at Tomorrow'sWorld And find us wherever
podcasts are available.
Welcome to the Tomorrow's World Today podcast.
We sit down with experts,world-changing innovators,
creators, and makers to explorehow they're taking action to
make tomorrow's world a betterplace for technology, science,
innovation, sustainability, thearts, and more.
George M. Davison (00:18):
Hello, everybody, and welcome to
another edition of Tomorrow'sWorld Today.
And today we have a specialguest.
His name is Jim Kelly.
Welcome, Jim.
Thank you.
Good to be here.
Well, Jim's had a successfullife in business, technology,
and in politics.
And at one time, he was in theReagan administration.
He's also built a company fromscratch.
(00:39):
It's called SynexisCorporation.
And it is actually a travelreservation system that's now
around the globe.
But today, he's become abest-selling author on Amazon.
Congratulations.
Thank you.
Yeah.
So I'm hoping today you'regoing to share some of your
stories with us that are in yourbook called Dare choices.
(01:01):
And I mean, you've really hadan interesting journey.
So I was hoping you could sharewith our audience today, you
know, why have you collected allthese stories on your life and
put them in this book for us?
Jim Kelly (01:15):
Well, let's start with how it happened.
First of all, I grew up inPittsburgh and I returned here
in 2017.
And by chance, I had a dinnerwith a guy named Max King, who's
pretty well known inPittsburgh.
He'd been head of thePittsburgh Foundation, but at
one time he'd been an editor ofthe Philadelphia Inquirer.
(01:37):
I told him a couple of mystories and he said, Jim, you
got to write a book about this.
I said, well, Max, let me thinkabout that.
So at the time, part of thereason why I returned to
Pittsburgh was I was anexecutive in residence at the
University of Pittsburgh KatzGraduate School of Business.
And students would frequentlyask me I tried to give examples
(02:03):
of things that I had experiencedin my business career and as
ways that they could look atwhat they were trying to do.
And the question always cameup, why did this happen?
How did you do this?
And why did you do this?
So I thought about that and Ithought about what Max had said
to me.
And then I guess it was acouple months later, I ran into
(02:28):
him.
He had written the book, I'mMr.
Rogers.
And at the release, he said,how's your book coming?
I said, well, I haven't startedyet.
He said, get busy.
So...
When a man of that stature andexperience tells you you better
sit down and try and write abook, I got started.
George M. Davison (02:52):
So
Jim Kelly (02:52):
your listening
George M. Davison (02:53):
skills were still intact.
Yeah.
Well, I follow orders.
That's all right.
I think at the bottom of thehour, though, we're going to
want to figure out why youselected these stories and you
put them together for anaudience because you wouldn't
likely want to help some peoplealong the way, didn't you?
Jim Kelly (03:14):
Well, I really was interested in showing how one
thing leads to another in life.
A lot of people, I think, tendto engage in one thing and they
stick with it and some becomevery good at it, others don't.
But some people learn from thatexperience and they apply it to
(03:38):
the next door, so to speak, thenext road in their life.
And I think a lot of youngpeople have a fear of not trying
things that may prove to be notonly outside their envelope,
but very difficult.
So I try to show here that itis not necessarily easy, but if
(04:04):
it's handled with some degree offinesse and you're careful
about how you do it, you canchange from one thing to another
in your life.
And you can try and have a lotof different experiences, which
in the end should turn out to befun, as they were for me.
Yes,
George M. Davison (04:24):
you had a very active life there for quite
a bit, building all thesethings.
Jim Kelly (04:29):
So I had a lot of luck too.
I had a lot of people thathelped along the way.
And that's another thing thatI've encouraged young people to
do is to gather around thempeople that they can look to as
mentors in their career, intheir life going forward.
(04:51):
And I had that with people likeElsie Hellman here in
Pittsburgh, who's well-knownhere, Drew Lewis from the
eastern part of the state, andin my technical career with a
guy named Dave Huebner, who hadbeen in the Defense Department
and head of the ResearchDepartment of the Defense
(05:13):
Department.
So
George M. Davison (05:16):
somehow or another, Jim, you became
comfortable in what I refer toas the uncomfortable.
And going out, meeting peoplethat you don't know, there's an
art and a system to doing that.
And I think a lot of ouraudience probably is very
unfamiliar with that.
Many of them may also be shy,but they, who knows, they may
(05:38):
want to pursue a career as anentrepreneur or to excel in the
business or political world.
How did you find that younavigated into this initially?
How did How did you become soconfident that going up to
meeting strangers who you knewcould be influential in your
(06:00):
career, what convinced you thatthat was a good idea to do, to
create these mentors?
Jim Kelly (06:06):
Well, there's no question but that I am an
introvert, which a lot of peopleask me, how does an introvert
do the things that you'vedecided to do?
And that's a...
It's just hard work.
And you've got to be willing toput yourself out there.
(06:29):
And if I can go back to MaxKing for a second, I asked Max,
I said, Max, with all yourwisdom in life, tell me, why do
you think this happened to me?
And he said, well, you putyourself out there.
And that's the real lesson ofthis book.
Whether it's, I mean, I giveyou one example.
(06:51):
I was a project engineer inSpain.
I was home on vacation.
I met Elsie Hellman.
I said, you know, Elsie, I'vealways been interested in
politics.
I said, do you think I might,this was in 1968 when things
were kind of on edge, and to putit bluntly and lightly, but she
said, have you thought abouttrying to help out here in the
(07:14):
political situation?
I said, no, I hadn't really.
She said, well, give it somethought, and if you'd like me to
help you with it, I'd be gladto do that.
And so the same thing happenedwith Drew Lewis, my other
mentor, who was theTransportation Secretary in the
Reagan administration.
one day asked me, he said, youknow, you seem to know a lot
(07:38):
about the internationalbusiness.
Mack Baldrige is looking forsomebody like you.
Would you be willing to give ita try?
I said, yeah.
So I put myself out there andsaid, yeah, I'll do that.
Next thing I know, I wassitting there with Mack
Baldrige.
George M. Davison (07:54):
And so that is a big part of the equation,
isn't it?
Absolutely.
Being able to put yourself outthere, give yourself an
opportunity to expand yourself,maybe your knowledge.
And people have that ability todo it.
It's not just anybody.
It's, for example, if you're inan area that you don't have
(08:15):
some mentors that you feel arestrong individuals, be patient.
Try to find, you know, goodmentors.
Try to put yourself, surroundyourself with good people who
can help you grow.
Is that a fair way to say it?
Yes, indeed.
Yeah.
I think that's a key part ofthis because a lot of folks
Maybe they grew up in a badfamily environment.
(08:39):
Maybe they're in an area oftown that's not all that
wonderful.
They haven't been exposed to alot of good things.
So getting them to thinkdifferently about how to get out
of that situation.
And you
Jim Kelly (08:54):
can go out and find mentors, right?
You can.
And there's an importantelement of this.
A lot of people in search of amentor go to someone that they
know.
they think can be a mentor andthey ask the question, what do
you think I should do with mylife?
And that doesn't work.
Mentors, prospective mentorsdon't respond to that very well.
George M. Davison (09:17):
The
Jim Kelly (09:18):
question should be, I would like to try this or this
is what I would like to do.
Can you help me do this?
And all the people I know thathave become serious mentors of
other people have always pitchedin.
When they're given a clearquestion, a request, they will
(09:45):
jump to be of help.
But if you go to them and say,what should I do with my life?
That will not carry the day.
Right.
George M. Davison (09:55):
So that's good advice.
Very good advice for theaudience today.
You know, you said in your bookthat you wanted to help
students try to figure outwhat's ahead of them.
And I was thinking on that.
And, you know, that falls intothe category of, you know,
having a noble cause, you know.
(10:15):
And now today you're out heretalking about your life and the
stories that have helped toshape you, compose it into a
book.
Is that what motivates you,chasing noble cause to try and
do some things that are betterfor others?
Never heard it put that way,but probably true.
That's the way I interpreted itwhen I read that.
Jim Kelly (10:38):
In one of the companies where I worked, BDM,
we had a saying, do things thatcount.
And that's another kind oflesson that I've tried to pass
on to students and youngerpeople that I've worked with.
that when you think about yourlife and the things that you're
(11:01):
doing, make sure that whateveryou do, do it well and make sure
that it counts for other peopleand for their future as well as
yours.
Yeah,
George M. Davison (11:14):
it hasn't been easy, has it?
In the book, there are momentsin there where you were
challenged pretty seriously.
Bad hiring from one angle thatcould have gone you into some
challenges, right?
Yes.
And you had to make some toughchoices and take on the board
and push your way forward.
But you were on the side ofwhat was right.
(11:38):
What was the right thing to do,right?
It's not always easy.
Jim Kelly (11:42):
Well, that takes me to another kind of observation.
When I've spoken to a number ofbusiness classes, I ask them, I
say, what's most important?
Is the investment investor, thecustomer, or the employee.
And invariably, the businessstudents will tell me it's the
(12:05):
investor or it is the customer.
They kind of forget about theemployee.
And I've always said that withthe right team, you can do
anything.
And so life is really aboutbringing together the right
people.
And there was a book that wascalled Good to Great, Getting
(12:26):
getting all the right people onthe bus, in the right seats on
the bus, going in the rightdirection.
And I think that's an importantlesson.
And one step beyond that isimportant that when you have
someone who is not a part of theteam or who is working against
(12:47):
the team, you need to changethat person very quickly.
And what I've seen is that mostpersonnel decisions are made
too far down the road, that youneed to make personnel decisions
the minute you know that youneed to make that change.
And this is true.
in many instances with peoplewho start companies.
(13:10):
Companies or new ventures areusually started between a couple
of friends.
George M. Davison (13:16):
And
Jim Kelly (13:17):
one of the friends ends up driving the train, the
other one kind of along for theride.
That shouldn't last very long.
And it's a very importantlesson because only 2% or so of
the startups survive.
So one of those reasons is thatnot everybody's on the same
page when it comes to completingtheir assignment.
(13:39):
Right, couldn't agree more.
George M. Davison (13:41):
So just to give you some leeway here, I
wanted to ask you if you couldtell us about your life of
turning dreams into goals andthen into results.
Jim Kelly (13:54):
Well, during my business career, not so much the
political activities that Iundertook, I paid attention to
the people above me.
And at some point, oddlyenough, it was in my early 50s,
(14:16):
I didn't say I know it all, butI concluded that I knew enough
that I could start a business.
And it just, Providence, Iguess, it just happened that
that was the beginning of theinternet.
And so I said to myself, I'mgoing to now use all the things
(14:39):
that I learned to start abusiness I have no idea what
that business is going to dowhich surprises a lot of people.
And I'm going to bring togetherthat team that I just spoke
about, and we're going to makeit happen.
So we started in a businesswhich was putting the Yellow
(14:59):
Pages online, which was abusiness that gave us the money
to then enter into the hotelreservation space.
And the hotel reservation spacecame about because I was told
precisely what the problem wasby the reservation manager of
one of the major hotel groups.
(15:21):
And the rest is kind ofhistory.
We made that product over aperiod of five or six years.
And it's now that company was,I think, recently sold for over
a billion dollars.
So that's the transition fromthe thought process to
accumulating the team that ittakes to do the job and then
(15:45):
actually doing the job andtaking the product to market.
George M. Davison (15:51):
It's interesting because you started
as an entrepreneur but you werein your 50s which is unusual.
It's interesting from anotherangle too because you spent so
much time in that politicalarena but you were exposed to a
lot of accomplished folks andyou traveled a lot.
I'd say there's one othercritical piece to the equation
(16:11):
and that is you have to besearching and making
observations.
And in your case, I'mwondering, does that mean that
at the age of 50 something, youwere saying to yourself, I'm not
quite fulfilled.
I want to become anentrepreneur and I'm going to
venture out of the politicallandscape and start going in
(16:31):
this other direction.
Was it like that?
Was it that clear?
Or was it because you do talkabout that in the book, but just
can you expand on that a littlebit, that moment in time of
working for someone else becauseyou were in the government?
But working for somebody else,and actually you were working
for another organization, whichis BDM.
(16:53):
You had them and you wereworking with them.
But there was something thatmust have transitioned you to
say, no, I'm going to go out andgo on my own.
That
Jim Kelly (17:03):
is a good question, George.
And I want to take it back tothere is a point in time where I
was asked to join a company andthey asked me to take an
assignment of acquiringcompanies for them in Europe.
Because I'd had businessexperience in Europe, but I had
never been in the acquisitionworld.
(17:24):
So I said, all right, I'll dothis, but I need to understand
acquisition accounting.
So they agreed to send me tothe University of Michigan for a
two-month course in acquisitionaccounting.
And I went to Europe andreviewed over 200 companies, and
we acquired a few of those.
And so each of the things thatI did, there was...
(17:49):
piece of the puzzle that I madea concerted effort to acquire
what I thought I was missing.
And one of the things that Ipoint to in the political side
and particularly working at ahigh level in the
administration, the Reaganadministration, was that I
learned to write.
(18:10):
I mean, I knew how to write.
I had worked for a senator andhe was an excellent writer and
his administrative assistant wasa former newspaper editor.
So I had the basics.
But Secretary Baldrige was areal stickler about writing.
So I learned there how to writeand how to make a business
(18:30):
presentation.
With that, again, I felt I hadanother piece that I could carry
forward in building a business.
And it's kind of all thesethings that I acquired in my
career that came together forthe purpose of starting a
company.
George M. Davison (18:49):
So the art of writing helps to get the story
out as to what you're trying toaccomplish.
Is that
Jim Kelly (18:56):
why?
Absolutely.
More than that, thepresentations, the PowerPoint
presentations, I worry aboutyoung people being able to write
now because we see what'shappened with email and
(19:16):
autocorrect and so forth.
Writing is the definitely arequired skill of success.
Definitely.
I say that people should read,they should write, and they
should write well.
George M. Davison (19:31):
I agree with you.
And I'd take it a step furtherbecause you made another comment
earlier about how you took adifferent type of accounting,
financial acquisition.
So it's writing and telling agood story, but also you have to
be able to, in this case, yousaid make acquisitions, but also
you're going to go and raisemoney, aren't you?
Jim Kelly (19:52):
Yes.
George M. Davison (19:53):
In order to raise money, you really need to
understand money.
Yes.
So that's another importantingredient.
Jim Kelly (19:59):
You have to be able to understand money, but you
also have to be good atstorytelling.
You have to be able to tell thestory of what's happening to
the money in a way that peopleunderstand more than the
numbers.
The money has something beforeit and after it.
(20:20):
And you need to build that intoa story.
George M. Davison (20:23):
So initially you had to raise money to get
this off the ground.
I think it was 400,000 is whereyou started.
And you went through a methodto do that, meeting with people
and telling the story of whatyou wanted.
Can you walk us back in time alittle bit so that this audience
can relate to that moment wherethe internet was coming into
(20:47):
place and you had your area ofknowledge you had a customer who
was in that field of doingsomething with hotels told you
about this problem that wasgoing on and you looked at that
and said i think with technologyand with the right programming
we could we could turn that intoa business and we could scale
(21:10):
that that.
So can you talk a little bitabout what was going on at that
moment in time?
And then I'm going to ask youto walk us forward and give us a
few stories that might bereally compelling for the
audience to know about thatreally were critical stepping
stones that let the company moveinto a more stable financial
(21:34):
position.
Because you had to raise money,I think, a couple of times.
Jim Kelly (21:37):
Yes.
Oh, yes.
Yeah.
We, from a technologystandpoint, two things were
happening at that moment thatwe, I won't say that we were
first because I'm sure therewere others out there, but we
presented our product assoftware as a service, S-A-A-S,
which has become rathercommonplace now.
(21:59):
But at that time, having thecompany hold the software and
putting a graphic user face infront of the customer and
saying, go to it, that was veryunusual.
Secondly, we charged on atransaction basis, which was
unusual.
Most of the reservations were,they were provided for in a
(22:21):
software package.
You bought the software and youran it and then you figured out
what your costs per reservationwere.
We only charged on a completedreservation.
So we could give, we gave thesoftware away.
We said, here it is, it'syours, it's free, but you owe
and we cut the price of softwarereservations in half.
(22:45):
And so people were absolutelykeen to use it.
And there's one moment.
George M. Davison (22:54):
Can I pause you for a moment?
So in other words, a thing thatwas going on, this is a
critical moment where there'ssomething else in the
marketplace and it's kind ofset.
You have to buy it.
You have to have a learningcurve.
You go through this process.
Right.
The old saying is, if you cangive it to them for free, that's
(23:43):
a pretty powerful motivator.
So you did figure that out.
Oh, yes.
Okay, so that's a very criticalpart of your innovation.
What are a few of the otherones?
Jim Kelly (23:53):
Well, I wanted to give you one of the stories
where everything very quicklytransitioned.
I went to, we had a fellow whowas head of strategy, and he
said, you know, he said, we'vegot to be looking at Las Vegas.
So I'd never been to Las Vegas.
So somehow or another, I got ameeting with the president of
(24:15):
the MGM Grand Hotel, which isthe largest hotel in the world
with 5,000 rooms.
So I go into his office and I'mat the table.
It's a big table.
And across the table from me ishis head of IT, therefore the
guy that runs his reservationsystem.
So it's a mano a mano.
(24:35):
And I did the best I could.
I explained what our system wasand what it was going to cost
him, nothing.
And the guy across the tabledidn't really have much to say.
So MGM adopted the system.
And then every hotel in LasVegas had to have the same thing
(24:56):
that MGM had in order to defendthemselves in that really
basically tiny market.
So that moved us ahead.
From then on, it was our game.
Yeah, that's wonderful.
George M. Davison (25:10):
I love that story.
It shows you how to move.
And it gives you an example ofhow to think strategically and
move your product or service sothat you can get adaptability,
right?
How do you get absorption ofwhat you've created?
Because there's a lot of greatinnovation in the world, but it
just never really gets afoothold in the door long enough
(25:32):
to survive.
Jim Kelly (25:33):
Yeah, remember, it's that part about you got to tell
a story.
You know, it's the story.
And the story for us goingforward was always it's going to
cost you half as much as anyother hotel to use our
reservation system and you'regoing to have more people
staying at your hotel and soforth and so on.
(25:54):
But it was all put together ina story.
George M. Davison (25:57):
And it all happened because you put
yourself in a position toidentify a problem that you
thought you could solve.
Jim Kelly (26:06):
Well, it goes back to the fellow who said I I need to
be able to sell my last room.
So the reason- Can you explainthat a little more for
George M. Davison (26:15):
the audience?
Jim Kelly (26:17):
The reason, it's a bit complicated, but in the
travel world, there are what'scalled GDS, Global Distribution
System.
And GDS is Backstop TravelAgents.
And so there are four mainGDSs, the best known is Sabre.
And Sabre was created byAmerican Airlines.
(26:39):
they provide a list of all thehotels and aircraft and car
rentals.
And most travel agents areconnected with one of those
GDSs, but this travel agent mayhave, say, a wedding.
So he books his allocation ofrooms in a hotel through his
(27:02):
GDS, say, at Sabre.
Anybody who goes to him willshow that his booking path is
complete.
There are no more rooms.
And anybody who's workingthrough that particular GDS may
find that all the rooms arebooked.
However, the hotel hasallocated rooms to the other
(27:25):
GDSs.
So other travel agents that areworking through the other GDSs
have rooms that they can sell.
So you've probably encountereda situation where you went one
way on the internet and youfound that the that the hotel
had no rooms.
You went another way and youfound that there were plenty of
(27:45):
rooms available.
We combined the GDSs so thatyou had a complete picture and
it was expensive process.
In those days, it was $100,000for joining that GDS.
So we put the four together,that was $400,000 right off the
top.
And once we did that, then wecould assure you that you're
(28:07):
looking at the entire inventoryof the hotel, which goes back to
the preservation manager whoasked me, who told me, I can't
sell my last room.
We made it possible for him toshow all of his rooms to the
customers and thereby sell thelast room.
And that's a wonderfulinnovation.
George M. Davison (28:26):
So in other words, you took all the separate
parts, put them under one.
So everything was talking toeach other instead of having
them in silos.
And then the hotel owner endsup with these empty rooms, which
in turn leads to a lot of lessopportunity, right?
From an entrepreneur'sperspective.
Identifying all those littleneeds and problems inside
(28:51):
existing business models is a,you know, well, we know the
story of other entrepreneurswho've been outrageously
successful looking atcorporations and the needs that
they have.
That's how a lot of innovationlaunches.
Jim Kelly (29:04):
I have to believe that's a part of your business
here, that all of the innovationwork that you're doing is in
response to some express needsomewhere along the way.
Yes.
George M. Davison (29:16):
I mean, Tomorrow's World Today is an
example.
You mentioned storytelling,right?
Well, storytelling in the fieldof, it doesn't matter if you're
Caterpillar or Microsoft or anyof the other partners that have
been on our shows, they aredeveloping fantastic technology.
But the art of getting thestory out, you could be a
(29:37):
multi-billion dollar company andyet you still struggle on how
to shape that story to anaudience.
And so it's a real art that is,the way we refer to it, you do
your inventing, then you do yourmaking, and then you do your
storytelling.
And so we combine those three,kind of the way you've combined
the silos.
(29:58):
We've combined those threesilos into one compact unit.
But I thought another thingthat might be of interest to our
audience today would be Youknow, if you were able to sit
down one-on-one with youngerpeople who are trying to figure
(30:18):
out their journey in life, it'sjust like we all did.
You know, we're in high school.
We're not sure where we'regoing.
We're just facing, there's thisdeadline approaching where it's
parents are going to want youout of the house.
They're going to want you outon your own, supporting
yourself, growing up to be anadult.
And that clock is ticking andyou're Where am I going?
(30:40):
How am I figuring out thislife?
And that stress moment is whatI think could be very helpful
for our audience to understand.
First of all, we all go throughit, but it might be nice to
hear, like if you were talkingone-on-one with one of your own
children and trying to help themget ready to navigate that part
(31:01):
of their life, what might besome of the advice you would
Jim Kelly (31:05):
give?
Part of the apple doesn't fallfar from the tree myself.
My son is a travel advisor.
But I've done this many times.
I've talked to a lot of youngpeople, both at Pitt, but in
Washington and in startups andwhat have you.
When I sit down with someone,the first question I have for
(31:29):
them is, what do you like to do?
And I've had situations whereone particular guy came to me
and he said, what do you think Ishould do?
I said, that's not for me tosay, but what I'd like to know
is what do you like to do?
He said, well, I really like togo surfing.
(31:52):
He said, you know, I like theoutdoors.
I said, so what's keeping youfrom it?
And he said, well, what do youmean?
And I said, you know, there's athousand different jobs that
you could find that would payyou to do what you love to do.
And by gosh, he went out andwound up working in a surfboard
(32:15):
company and is making a handyliving.
And he's a very happy guy.
But that's the story I tellyoung people is that, look, do
what you really want to do.
And, you know, in my case,growing up, I was just very
interested in the internationalworld.
And I made a decision to go tothe International Graduate
(32:37):
School in Arizona.
And it worked out for me.
But do what you really want todo, not just because you've got
to go out and make a buck andget out of the house.
Right.
And almost anything, you canmake money.
Anything.
All right.
(32:58):
So
George M. Davison (32:59):
this next question is a little different.
But what are some of the thingsthat you will share with us?
that you never expected as anentrepreneur, but somehow it
makes perfect sense to you now.
Jim Kelly (33:14):
Oh boy, that's something that I never expected.
You know, I hate to say this,but one of the things that you
try to do is you try to lookforward and catch everything
that's coming.
I've relied pretty heavily onmy intuition about people.
In a few instances, I wassorely disappointed.
(33:39):
And people who I thought fitthe bill for whatever it was
that happened, really didn't, Iwas totally thrown by that.
And in a couple of instances,it caused huge board fights and
so forth.
One individual who I releasedcame back to me later and he
(34:05):
said, you know, he said, it wasactually good for that to happen
to me.
And he said, the worst part ofit was I let you down.
I said, well, you know, I letyou down too by bringing you
into a situation where youcouldn't perform.
So everything goes back topeople.
You know, everything in thisworld goes back to people and
(34:29):
how you treat people and how youwork with people and how you
motivate people.
That's what it all amounts to.
Yeah.
Like you said, get them on the
George M. Davison (34:41):
right seat and the right bus going in the
right direction.
That's right,
Jim Kelly (34:47):
yeah.
Yeah.
Those were a couple, probablytwo or three, and I wrote about
it in the book.
There are two or three misfiresthat I made at the What a big
surprise to me.
George M. Davison (35:01):
So you have our audience here and, you know,
I can speak up for the book.
It's got some really goodstories in there from an
entrepreneur's perspective, atleast from my angle of reading
the book.
There's a lot of good lessonsin there.
What other things would youlike to share with the audience
personally today that you mightlike to get across?
Jim Kelly (35:23):
Well, I do hope that people, and in particular,
younger people who are trying tosort out their careers will
take a look at this book andread through some of the stories
because it will help you answerthe question of how to go about
doing what you like to do andhow to be successful in that
(35:47):
mission.
That's it.
George M. Davison (35:50):
I think you've demonstrated you're true
to your cause because I knowyou're trying to do that in this
book.
So thank you for sharing yourinsights today.
There's of course, a lot morein that book that we can't cover
today.
But thank you for sharing bitsand pieces of these stories and
for putting yourself out there,Jim.
Thank you, George.
(36:10):
It's been a pleasure.
Well, everybody, that's anotheredition of Tomorrow's World
Today.
Bye now.
Steven Ruffing (36:17):
Thank you for listening to this episode of
Tomorrow's World Today podcast.
Join us next time as wecontinue to explore the worlds
of inspiration, creation,innovation, and production.
Discover more at Tomorrow'sWorld And find us wherever
podcasts are available.
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