Saturday Bonus Podcast - Mattress Mac's 10 Rules For A Successful Life

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Michael Berry Show, Mattress Mac Jim mackingveil making a
movie about him right now. He's a Houston icon. The
amount of service, money, hospitality that he has provided over
the years for those in need is truly incredible. He's
opened his doors to all the Hurricane Harvey victims. Who

(00:21):
can forget that he loves Houston. That's why we coined
the phrase Mac Gives Back, and we encourage others to
use it. Mack also has an incredible business mind. Nobody
markets their business better than Mac back. In twenty nineteen,
he gave a speech at the Advertising Education Foundation of
Houston Scholarship luncheon. He would share his ten tips for success.

(00:46):
Maybe you have kids home from college for the holidays.
This is a great message for anyone, but especially young
people getting ready to go out and begin their careers.
Share this with the young people in your life. I
think it's fantastic advice.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
I came to talk about. I came to talk to
the students and give you my Mattress Max ten rules
for a successful life. Some of the same as last time,
some are new and anyway, here goes number one. Find
a job you love to do and never have to
work a day in your life. I think it's real

(01:23):
important that you don't go into marketing or accounting or
become a lawyer or doctor because your parents want you
to do it. I think you need to do what
you want to do. I think you need to do
what gets you excited in the morning and you want
to get out of bed and you can't wait to

(01:44):
get to work. I will tell you a story about
some of my history. I gamble a lot, and I'm
involved in the racehorse business. I became a millionaire in
the racehorse business problems. I started out as a damn billionaire,
but that's another story. So a couple of years ago,

(02:05):
I was trying to figure out how to make these
damn horses run faster, and I came across this story
about this woman named Temple Grandon. And Temple Granded is
the world's authority on animal welfare and she is a savant.
So anyway, I got to know Temple and I got
to know her story. Here was a woman that she

(02:28):
was born to a wealthy family in Boston, and her
mother was concerned because after three years of age, she
didn't speak a word. Temple has full blown off the
charts autism and Asperger's, but her mother wasn't giving into
the diagnosis of this child will never amount to anything,

(02:49):
you know. Her mother was like everybody in the audience
here today, not a buyer but a seller. And so
her mother got her lots of help. And her mother
spent countless hours working with Little Temple trying to make
it to where she could function in society. She would
never be normal, but she was going to help Temple
use that disability as an ability. And her mother and

(03:11):
her father would have dinner parties at their home all
the time, and Little Temple, being full of blown autistic,
was terribly shy. Her mother made her put on her
fancy dress and go introduce herself to every person at
the dinner party. Every time they had a dinner party.
Made her get out of her comfort zone. And that's
something I want to encourage you students to do. Get

(03:31):
out of your comfort zone all the time. Remember tame
time for Little Temple to go to high school. Her
mother insisted she go to this boarding school. She didn't
want to go away from her mother. She was shy, introversed,
and autistic, but she did, and they put her in
charge of the horse barn. There was eight horse stalls
there and she had to clean out and muck the

(03:53):
stalls every day. She didn't want to do that, but
she did it, and then she soon now she fell
in love with these animals, these horses. Then when her mother,
when Temple came to be eighteen years old, she was
going off to college. Her mother said, you're going to
go to your aunt's cattle ranch in Arizona, and she

(04:15):
fell in love with cattle. They raised cattle and sold
them to the feed lots. And this woman would get
down in the cattle shoots and see from the ground
level like a cowbould because she sees the world through
a different lenbs. So fast forward, Temple grand And went

(04:36):
on to get a PhD and animal husbandry from Colorado
State University. And now she's seventy two or seventy three
years old. She's done more for animal welfare than anybody
in human history. She's done more for animal welfare than
anybody in human history that goes back eight hundred thousand years.

(04:58):
And she's also so one of the world's experts on
autism and aspergers and speaks all over the world on
those subjects. She gets paid enormous sums for her speeches,
and every dying from her speeches go to fund the
scholarships for her students at Colorado State. And she loves
going to work every day. Her and I were talking

(05:22):
about jobs, and she said, I would encourage every child
out there to try five, ten, fifteen, twenty different jobs.
If you want to go in the marketing field, try
lots of different marketing opportunities, lots of different jobs in
the same agency or different agencies, and find the one
you love. You never have to work a day in
your life. Find a job you love to do. You'll

(05:43):
never have to work a day in your life. And
you say, well, what if I experience prejudiced and bad
treatment when I go out there, get over it. When
Temple Grandam was going into those feed lots when she
was a new PhD. And this was back forty years

(06:04):
ago in the nineteen sixties, she had to dress up
as a man to get in the feed lot, and
she changed it forever. Find a job you love to do,
and you'll never have to work a day in your life.
That's my number one piece of advice. And if going
to work doesn't excite you more than your favorite activity,
find a new job. Number two. Realize that work is

(06:27):
life's greatest therapy. Human beings were made. We're put on
this earth to live, work, play, and die in groups.
We were made to live, work, play, and die in groups.
Work is life's greatest therapy. I have a wonderful little child.
Her name is Elizabeth. When she was thirteen years old,

(06:50):
her mother and my wife, Linda, came to me said
something terribly wrong with Elizabeth. I said, what is it?
She said, She's got this weird disease where she washes
her hands four or five hundred times a day, and
she does all these strange rituals and compulsions, and she's
lost thirty pounds, which she didn't have a loser begin with.
She's afraid to go back to the public school of
Westfield Highchool she goes to. And her mother said, I
just don't know what them to do. So we took

(07:13):
Elizabeth and several North Houston area psychiatrists and they all
said they'd never seen such a severe case before of
obsessive compulsive disorder named Howard Hughes disease after a famous Houstonian,
and several of these doctors set in front of that child.
The best thing y'all can do is put her in

(07:34):
a mental institution for the rest of her life. They
said that in front of my little child. We know
her mother and I weren't buying that stuff. And so
we searched the world trying to find a place for
this child to get better, and we finally found the
minigre Clinican Topeak at Kansas one day, and we took
her up there and put her in that mental health
institute that Cole Snowy February day there in Kansas, and

(07:57):
now all of her nightmares were coming true. We were
abandoning her, putting her into mental health instituit for the
rest of your life. That's what she thought. That was
her perception, her reality. Nothing could have been further than truth.
That's what she thought. As we left there that day,
her little face was pushed up against the plate glass wall,
screaming at her mother mind, please don't leave me here,
because you felt we gonna leave her that mentalisteuse for
the rest of her life. And she sat down on

(08:19):
a couch as she cried and she vomited, and this
little girl came and put her arm or understood it's okay.
I felt the same way when I first got here.
I'm leaving in three weeks, and this place saved my life.
Elizabeth got out of Minnegar, came back to Houston and
re enrolled at Westfield High School, and she was doing well.
Then she had another relapse and went back to Minegar,
which at that time had moved to Houston. Because you see,

(08:43):
mental illness is a cruel disease. No one knows who
it may strike her. Why mental illness never goes away,
It lasts forever. My child will always be walking on
the edge of a cliff. I cannot keep her from falling.
She went back to Minegar for another eight weeks and
got back out, and then she had started helping other

(09:05):
people with mental illnesses. And you found through doing this work,
it gave her therapy. So her work became her therapy,
and her work became her therapy. And now this child
who they said said would never finish high school, who
they said we should lock in a mental institution for
the rest of her life. She has a PhD from
the University of Houston and she is a professor at

(09:25):
the Bailey College of Medicine. So she continues on the
road to success because work is life's greatest therapy. You
want to feel better about yourself, Go delight a customer, right,
Go take care of a patient. Go make somebody's day.

(09:49):
Human beings were made to work. Next Mattress Mac success tip.
This is one of my favorites. Get ready your sins entitlement.
We should be grateful for everything and the title to nothing.
I got those kids that work for me, several of them.
They are now legal, but they they swam the river
coming here from Mexico, and they went through the forest

(10:13):
and the snakes were everywhere trying to get here. One
of them told me he never had meet when he
was a child. The only way they had meet in
his village was when a cow fell off the cliff,
and then they would harvest the cow if they didn't
get to it too late. With those fortunate people in
the world live in the United States, my end of
the free, home of the brave, land of opportunities for
all of us. I didn't have any money when I

(10:37):
got to Houston, and as Bill said, the odds of
me making it were about ten million to one. But
you know, my wife and I had a great, big,
unfair advantage, and that unfair advantage was called desire. You
can do anything you want to do in the great
free enterprise system if you wanted to do it bad enough.

(10:58):
We're not living in Venezuela. We don't have power out it,
we don't have grocery stores, no grocery in them. We're
in the greatest country in the world, and we all
have an opportunity every day to go out there and
make customers lives better, make our own lives better, and
get better together. In other words, quit whining and do
something about it. Avail yourself of continuous education. Education is

(11:22):
the greatest gift I know of. It's the only thing
I know of. You can take all you want. There's
always plenty left for everybody else. There's always plenty left
for everybody else. I'm sixty eight years old and I
try to educate myself every day. I run on a
treadmill every night because I'm too old to run outside.
But I watched these videos. I'm watching this incredible video

(11:43):
the other day between a Catholic bishop and a Jewish rabbi.
They were talking and a Jewish rabbi told this story.
I'm continuing to educate myself at age sixty eight. He
told this story about this young kid who was eight
years old in during the Holocaust. He was Jewish. All

(12:04):
they had to eat in the family's household was margarine,
and it came time for a Jewish holiday and his
father lit the candle with the margin they had left,
and the kids screamed at his father said that's all
we have to eat. How could you possibly do that?
And the father said, my son, I have learned that

(12:25):
human beings can go for three weeks without food, three
days without water, but they can't go for three minutes
without hope. That child went on to survibe eighteen concentration camps.
Eighteen concentration camps lived to one hundred and one years old.

(12:48):
We can all educate ourselves every day to inspire ourselves
to do better, to do more for ourselves, for our clients,
for our families, for our community, to make the world
a better place through continuing education. Number five, prepare for setbacks.
I see all this stuff on media now about not

(13:09):
being a bully and learning how to be fair and
all this, and that's good stuff, but you know what,
Life ain't fair. Life ain't fair, And nobody said it
was going to be fun, easier, fair, and I can
promise all you graduates here today, they're gonna knock you
down a lot. My model is real simple. Fall seven,
Rise eighty eight. They're going to knock you down a lot.

(13:32):
Prepare for setbacks. One thing this country used to pride
itself on was overcoming adversity. Pride yourself on overcoming adversity.
Pride yourself on being anti fragile, on being the most
resilient person on the planet. Prepare for setbacks and look
forward to those setbacks and charge into the fire. Don't
run away from it. Number six, you got to innovate

(13:55):
or evaporate. My mentor w Edwards Demings had change not necessary.
Survival is not mandatory, he said. Change is not necessary.
Survival is not mandatory. As Bill said, all of this
gray haired people in here that are in media have
seen lots of changes in the last forty years, and
it continues to change all the time. But you know

(14:16):
that's great because change brings opportunity for people that embrace change.
Most human beings hate change. We hate a disruption in
our routine. But the world is being disrupted every single day.
My little business, brick and mortar retail is totally disrupted
by Amazon and Wayfair and all those people. It's a challenge.

(14:37):
We all have our challenges, but we've got to innovative.
We're going to evaporate. But the good news is challenge
brings new opportunities for us to seize upon and grow
with number seven, be a people person. All you kids
out there grew up in the digital age. You probably
spend twelve to fifteen hours a day on a screen,
whether it's your phone or your iPad or your computer.

(15:02):
All that stuff is great, but it teaches no soft skills.
You got to learn how to relate to people. The
people that are most successful in this life are people persons.
My advertising lady Brenda, she's the world's greatest people person.
Her husband Ed is the world's greatest people person. They
know everybody in this town. If they don't know them,

(15:23):
they're going to go up and meet them. If you
create a network of people, then you have a problem
in life. There's somebody you know who can help you
out again. Human beings were made to live, work, playing
dying groups. The biggest challenge for you young peoples get
off those iPads and go meet some people. Got to
get out there and meet people. And the more people

(15:44):
you know, they're gonna help you advance your career, make
life easier and more fun for you. Be a people person.
Number eight, Shine a light on it. Leave a life
of transparency, not of life of opakeness. Shine a light
on it, get out front, show what you do, what

(16:06):
you can do, and don't hide anything. I am a
huge Catholic and the Catholic Church has a huge problem
because they're not shining a light on it. They're covering
it up. It only gets worse, doesn't it. Shine a
light on it. Light brings hope. I have a racehorse.
She was named after me. Her name is Workaholic. But anyway,

(16:32):
she has a muscle injury and I was talking to
my sister in law who's my trainer, the other day
and they use this laser light therapy and the muscle
injury is four inches below her skin. But by shining
a light on that muscle, the muscle gets better. Shining

(16:53):
a light on anything in life makes things get better.
Be terribly transparent in your life. Have nothing to hide.
Transparency is good. Light is great. Number nine. There's a
woman here in Houston, and all you kids need to
know about use scholarship recipients. Her name is a von Strait.

(17:19):
Sixty five years ago, a Vonn Straight. Her father was
a doctorate Methodist hospital. She gave birth to a beautiful
baby and the baby had severe Down syndrome. Back then,
the age expectancy of a child with Down syndrome was
six years old. And Vonn was told she went to

(17:40):
all these doctors desperately searching for hope for a child,
and they all said hopeless situation, no chance. But Avon
wouldn't give up on her child. So Vin went on
to start the Briarwood School for children with learning disabilities
like her child with Down syndrome. And then she started Brookwood,

(18:01):
which is a home for adults with learning disabilities. And
everybody at Brookwood, even the paraplegics, have a full time
job because von liked me believes that life work is
life's greatest therapy. And so I have an adopted child
named Regina. So I was trying to get Regina into Briarwood.
So I called a Vonn who I knew, and she

(18:22):
got Lindon Regina chance for an interview at Briarwood, and
they went up to Briarwood interview and Regina probably promptly
kicked a fit in the lobbying and laid on the ground,
kicked and screened for forty five minutes. Linda gathered up
it was totally humiliated, and took her home. Levon called
me the next day and said, Mac, I said, what

(18:43):
is it, bracing for the worst? She's a Regina has
been accepted into the Briarwood School, and I said, must
have been her interviewing skills. I asked a Van, was
Regina the toughest child that they have ever had at
bar which she said, oh, no, not by a long child.
So but who is? She said? It had to be
this boy named Tracy. I said, well, tell me about

(19:05):
Tracy's to Tracy was in one of my first classes.
He was inngargible. He was horrible. He broke up every class.
He was a mess the whole time. He said, many
times I want to kick Tracy out of a school, but
I didn't have the nerve to do it. She said.
Back then, we had three classrooms at a Methaist church
over here in West Timer. Tracy would run out in
the middle of the street trying to get cars to

(19:26):
hit him. She said. One day Tracy escaped the classroom,
climb up at the top of the church, was up
on the steeple forty feet above the ground, threatening to
jump off and kill himself, and the bond's down on
the ground. Her and Tracy have a standof for about
thirty minutes, and finally she gets Tracy to come off
the steeple onder the roof. He climbs into a tree,
comes off, the tree breaks, the limb off goes over

(19:47):
there where Avon takes this tree. Limon sticks it in
her leg like that, blood starts shooting out of her
thigh a little. Tracy's laying on the ground. He thinks
it's really funny, and Avon says, no matter what you
do to straighten you out, I'm not gonna give up
on you. I will straighten you out before you leave here.
So Tracy stayed there another three years and got better.
Then he went off to high school and Devon hadn't

(20:09):
seen him since. Fast forward thirty years later, Ravone's visiting
her friends at Briarwood School. She's now the chairman of
Emerisus and this good looking guy comes running down in
the hallway saying, hey, miss Straight and miss Straight and Straight.
Do you remember me? Do you remember me? She says, no,
I don't remember you. Who are you? He said, oh yeah, Mistraight,
you gotta remember me. I was your favorite student. She said, no,

(20:31):
who are you? She said, miss Straight, and Mistraight, it's me.
It's me Tracy. Levonne thought to herself, my goodness, I'm
surprised you're still alive. She said, Tracy, you look great.
He said, thank you, Miss Straight. She says, where do
you live? He said, I live in Los Angeles and
Levonne being a good text and thought that's not good.
The land of fruits and nuts. She said, Tracy, do

(20:52):
you have a job. He said, oh yeah, Mistraight, he said,
I got a good job. She said really, what do
you do? He said, I'm on television. You ever seen show?
She's not. I don't watch much television. She said, what
show me on? He said, I'm on chairs. See what
do you do? He said, I'm the bartender. His name's
Woody Harrelson. Bond Straight changed the world a couple of

(21:19):
months ago. She's ninety one years old. She had a
fell and hit her head at massive bleeding in her
brain lost all of her memory for eighteen hours. She
willed her memory back. In eighteen hours, she willed it back.

(21:40):
She was at the hospital. I told her to stay
for four or five days. After she willed her memory back,
she said, I have an appointment at Brooklynd with a
big donor. I'm out of here. Put her clothes on,
drove herself out there. At ninety one years old. A
life for for good. Become a life force for good

(22:05):
with your life. Don't just make a lot of money,
make a lot of difference. Number ten, Why are we here?
I will take you back to September second, nineteen forty four,
United States Navy aircraft carrier San Jacinto. It was a

(22:29):
beautiful Saturday. The youngest ever nable pilot, at age nineteen,
had a mission. He and his two crewmates were to
fly off the USS Sanja Cno in their Avenger airplane
and fly to Chichijima Island and bomb the radio tower

(22:50):
on that island. As he neared the island where that
radio tower was, the air filled with anti aircraft bursting
all around his airplane. The flag was unbelievable. As he
got closer, his plane was hit by one of those bombs,
and he thought to himself, my God, were gonna go down. Undaunted,

(23:13):
he continued on his mission. They dropped the bombs over
the radio tower and damaged part of the radio tower.
Then they roared off to sea. Now the smoke and
fire were filling the airplane and his radio wouldn't work.
He couldn't talk to the two crewman in the back,
but he turned the airplane upside down and screamed for
his two crewman to hit the silk fit The silk

(23:37):
as a Navy term for bailout. He assumed they had
bailed out. He righted the airplane kept flying. Then the
flames became uncontrollable. He parachuted himself out. As he ejected
from the airplane, the force the wind was so strong
pushed him back and his head hit the tail of

(23:59):
the airplane. Gash on his head, pulled one of the
rip cords, half of the hair at parachute open forgot
to pull the other rip cord. He hit the Pacific Ocean,
plunged down twenty or thirty feet into the sea, ingesting
seawater all the way down. Finally fought his way to
the surface, and all he was concerned was where are
my crewmates? And he couldn't see his crewmates. Then one

(24:23):
of the he looked up in the sky above him.
It was Japanese and American planes in a firefight, and
he found a there was a raft. Somebody had dropped
about fifty yards where he was. So he swam to
the raft, climbed on the raft, and the raft had
no oars. The current from Pacific was pushing him toward

(24:44):
this Japanese controlled island that was famous for cannibalism. So
he was laying in the raft, peddling with his arms,
all the while vomiting over the side, sick from ingesting
the seawater. And he did this for two hours. Then
a periscope stuck its way through the top of the

(25:06):
Pacific Ocean. They thank god, it was an American submarine and
they rescued George Herbert walker Bush. What he got on
the submarine. All he wanted to know was where are
my two crewmates? Where are they at? And he was
told that they were lost at sea, and he was devastated,
devastated for the next seventy four years of his life.

(25:32):
For the next seventy four years of his life, George
Herbert walker Bush got up every morning and said two words.
He said Why me? He said? Why me? He said,
why am I lucky enough to be alive when my
crewmates are dead and so many people on that USS
San Jacinto with me are dead, and thousands of Allied
soldiers are dead. Why me? He said? Why me? Why

(25:55):
am I lucky enough to have a loving and supporting God?
Why am I lucky enough to have a loving and
awarding family. Why am I lucky enough to live in Midland,
Texas to have the opportunity to be an oil man,
or living Houston, have the opportunity to be an oil
man and then a politician? Why me? And every day
of his life for the next seventy four years of
his life was dedicated to doing one thing, living up

(26:19):
and earning the right to be alive. When his two
crewmates were dead, the Eagles did a song after nine
to eleven. It was called There's a hole in the
world tonight. There's a hole in the world tonight. There's
still a hole in Houston. After losing George and Barbara
Bush last year, never once did he ever whind or complain.

(26:40):
Even when he lost the presidence of the United States
to Bill Clinton, he didn't whind, He didn't complain he
just did his duty. A life worth living. And how
often do people like me say why me when we
had a bad day at work? Why me when we
don't make that sale? I'm me when we get caught

(27:01):
in traffic? George Herbert Walker Bush and never complained to
Dan in his life? Why are we here? Life is
not about you and me. Life is about helping others.
And I added the bonus eleven point to Steve Jobs
after thought. I encourage all you graduates to do here today.

(27:27):
Do something radical with your life. Do something radical with
your life. Don't play it so damn safe, don't be
so conservative. Go for it, go for it. You know,
in early first and second century beat Ad, the Christian
Church developed because those Christians were radical and their song

(27:52):
and you'll know we're Christians buy our love, by our love.
They did radical things all the time. So I'm planning
on doing something ratical with my life before I leave here.
So when I go up there and see the Creator,
he'll say, you lived a good life, and you try
to market some degree of decency to the people. I

(28:13):
think that's what we all should do, is go out
there to have a great life and make a lot
of money. But more important, like George Herbert Walker Bush
and did, and like Barbara Bush did, we should make
a difference. Thanks very much.

Speaker 1 (28:25):
If your life the Michael Berry Show and Podcast, please
tell one friend, and if you're so inclined, write a
nice review of our podcast. Comments, suggestions, questions, and interest
in being a corporate sponsor and partner can be communicated
directly to the show at our email address, Michael at

(28:46):
Michael Berryshow dot com, or simply by clicking on our
website Michael Berryshow dot com. The Michael Berry Show and
Podcast is produced by Ramon Roeblis, the King of Ding.
Executive producer is Chad Knakanishi. Jim Mudd is the creative director.

(29:11):
Voices Jingles, Tomfoolery and Shenanigans are provided by Chance McLean,
Guest directory, Tell One, Samy Peterson and our assistant, a
nice review, listener podcast, super fun, contributions, questions, appreciate interest
and often incorporsor and part Our production can be community

(29:31):
where possible. We give a show. We're not at our
email take all the credit for ourselves. God Bless, show
doc Rush Limbaugh are simply by law in our webs office.
Michael Berry is simple man like Gary Show and podcast
God produces Ramon King of Ding. If you know a
veteran sufferings that PTSD is Chaul camp Hush at eight

(29:54):
seven seven seven one seven PTS nud is in a
comment direct veteran will answer the phone, and Shenanigans are
provided by Chance mclan. Director of Research is Sandy Peterson.
Emily Bull is our assistant listener and super fan. Contributions

(30:16):
are appreciated and often incorporated into our production. Where possible,
we give credit, where not, we take all the credit
for ourselves. God bless the memory of Rush Limbaugh. Long
live Elvis, be a simple man like Leonard Skinnard told you,
and God bless America. Finally, if you know a veteran

(30:40):
suffering from PTSD, call camp Hope at eight seven seven
seven to one seven PTSD and a combat veteran will
answer the phone to provide free counseling.