November 30, 2025 • 30 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Michael Barry Show, Mattress Mac Jim mackeveil 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. Mac 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.
(00:47):
Maybe you have kids home from college for the holidays.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
This is a.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
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
(01:24):
important that you don't go into marketing or accounting or
become a lawyer or a 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 get to work. I will tell you a story
(01:47):
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. The only problem is I started
out as a damn billionaire. But that's another story. So
a couple of years ago, I was trying to figure
out how to make these damn horses run faster, and
(02:09):
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 was born to a wealthy
(02:30):
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, you know. Her mother was
(02:51):
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 their father would have dinner parties
(03:13):
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 out of your comfort zone all
the time. Remember a tame time for Little Temple to
(03:35):
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 stalls every day. She didn't
(03:56):
want to do that, but she did it, and then
she soon found out 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 fell in love with cattle.
(04:17):
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 cowboyd because
she sees the world through a different lens. So fast forward.
Temple grand And went on to get a PhD in
(04:37):
Animal husband dry 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. And she's also one
(05:00):
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.
(05:21):
Her and I were talking 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
(05:43):
to do. You'll 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
(06:03):
back forty years 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 it 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,
(06:26):
Realize that work is 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
(06:49):
she was thirteen years old, 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 High School she goes to. And
(07:10):
her mother said, I just don't know what him to do.
So we took 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
(07:31):
in front of that child. The best thing y'all can
do is put her in 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
(07:52):
her in that mental health institute that Cole snowy February
day there in Kansas, and now all of her nightmares
were coming true. We were 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
(08:12):
the plate glass wall, screaming at her mother mind, please
don't leave me here, because you were going to leave
her that mentalisteuse for the rest of her life. And
she sat down on a couch and she cried and
she vomited, and this little girl came and put her
arm around her. Stood 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,
(08:35):
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, 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
(08:57):
Minegar for another eight weeks and got back out, and
then she had started helping other people with mental illnesses.
And you just 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
(09:18):
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 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
(09:44):
take care of a patient. Go make somebody's day. Human
beings were made to work. Next Mattress mac success tip.
This is one of my favorites. Get ready your sense
of entitlement. We should be grateful for everything and the
title to nothing. I got those kids that work for me,
(10:06):
several of them. They are now legal, but they they
swam the river coming here from Mexico, and they went
through the forest 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
(10:27):
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 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
(10:51):
called desire. You can do anything you want to do
in the great free enterprise system if you wanted to
do it bad enough. We're not living in venezuel 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,
(11:15):
quit whining and do something about it. Avail yourself of
continuous education. Education is the greatest gift I know of
it. 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.
(11:36):
I run on a treadmill every night because I'm too
old to run outside. But I watch these videos. I'm
watching this incredible video 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
(11:57):
young kid who was eight years old in Germany during
the Holocaust. He was Jewish. All 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 margarine they had left, and the kids screamed
(12:18):
at his father, So that's all we have to eat.
How could you possibly do that? And the father said,
my son, I have learned that 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 survive eighteen concentration camps. Eighteen concentration camps
(12:45):
lived to one hundred and one years old. 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
(13:06):
all this stuff on media now about not 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 gonna 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.
(13:27):
Fall seven, Rise eighty eight. They're gonna knock you down
a lot. 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
(13:49):
and look forward to those setbacks and charge into the fire.
Don't run away from it. Number six. You got to
innovate or evaporate. My mentor w Edwards Dimming said change
is not necessary. Survival is not mandatory. He said, change
is not necessary. Survival is not mandatory. As Bill said,
all of us gray haired people in here that are
(14:09):
in media have seen lots of changes in the last
forty years, and it continues to change all the time.
But you know 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
(14:30):
mortar retail is totally disrupted by Amazon and Wayfair and
all those people. It's a challenge. 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
(14:51):
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. 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,
(15:16):
she's the world's greatest people person. Her husband Ed is
the world's greatest people person. They know everybody in this
town that they don't know them, 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
(15:38):
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 you know, they're going to 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
(15:59):
life of opakeness. Shine a light on it, Get out front,
show what you do, what 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.
(16:23):
I have a racehorse. She was named after me. Her
name is Workaholic. But anyway, 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
(16:46):
her skin. But by shining a light on that muscle,
the muscle gets better. Shining a light on anything in
life makes things get better. Be terribly transparent in your life.
To hide transparency is good. Light is great. Number nine.
(17:10):
There's a woman here in Houston and all you kids
need to know about the scholarship recipients. Her name is
a von Strait. 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.
(17:32):
Back then, the age expectancy of a child with Down
syndrome was six years old. And Vonn was told she
went to all these doctors desperately searching for hope for
a child, and they all said hopeless situation, no chance.
But Avonn wouldn't give up on her child. So Vin
(17:53):
went on to start the Briarwood School for children with
learning disabilities like her child with Down syndrome. And then
she started Brookwood, 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
(18:17):
an adopted child named Regina. So I was trying to
get Regina into Briarwood. So I called a Vonn who
I knew, and she got Lindon Regina chance for an
interviewed at Briarwood, and they went up to Bridwood 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
(18:38):
took her home. Yvon called me the next day and said, Mac,
I said, what 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
(18:58):
ever had at bar which she said, own, no, not
buy a long child. So but who is? She said?
It had to be this boy named Tracy. I said, well,
tell me about Tracy's to Tracy was in one of
my first classes. He was Inngorgible. 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 school, but I didn't have the nerve to do it.
(19:19):
She said. Back then, we had three classrooms at a
Methist church over here in West Timer. Tracy would run
out in the middle of the street trying to get
cars to 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 Vonn's
down on the ground. Her and Tracy have a standoff
for about thirty minutes, and finally she gets Tracy to
(19:42):
come off the steeple onder the roof. He climbs into
a tree, comes off, the tree breaks, the limb off
goes over 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 Vonn says, no matter
what you do, I'm gonna straighten you out. I'm not
gonna give up on you. I will straighten you out
(20:03):
before you leave here. So Tracy stayed there another three
years and got better. Then he went off to high
school and Devonne hadn't seen him since. Fast forward thirty
years later, Evon's visiting her friends at Briarwood School. She's
now the chairman 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
(20:25):
are you? He said, oh yeah, mis Straight, you gotta
remember me. I was your favorite student. She said, no,
who are you? She said, miss Straight, Misstraight, 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
(20:45):
Levonne being a good text and thought that's not good.
The land of fruits and nuts. She said, Tracy, do
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. It ain't my show.
She says, no, I don't watch much television. She said,
what show are on? He said, I'm on chairs. See
(21:08):
what do you do? He said, I'm the bartender. His
name's Woody Harrelson. Bond Straight changed the world a couple
months ago. She's ninety one years old. She had a
fell and hit her head, had massive bleeding in her brain,
(21:31):
lost all of her memory for eighteen hours. She willed
her memory back. In eighteen hours, she willed it back.
She was at the hospital. I told her to say
for four or five days. After she willed her memory back,
she said, I have an appointment at Brooklynd with a
(21:51):
big donor. I'm out of here. Put her clothes on,
drove herself out there at ninety one years old. A
life force for good. Become a life force for good
with your life. Don't just make a lot of money,
make a lot of difference. Number ten, Why are we here?
(22:17):
I will take you back to September second, nineteen forty
four United States Navy aircraft carrier San Jacinto. It was
a beautiful Saturday. The youngest ever nable pilot at age nineteen,
(22:38):
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
on that island. As he neared the island where that
radio tower was, the air filled with anti aircraft bombs
(23:01):
bursting all around his airplane. The flag was unbelievable as
he got close, for his plane was hit by one
of those bombs, and he thought to himself, my God,
were gonna go down. Undatted, 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.
(23:23):
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.
Hit the silk as a Navy term for bailout. He
assumed they had bailed out. He righted the airplane kept flying.
(23:45):
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 the airplane. Giant gash on his head pulled
one of the rip cords, half of the hair at
parachute opened forgot to pull the other rip cord. He
(24:07):
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 of the he looked up in
the sky above him. It was Japanese and American planes
(24:28):
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 this Japanese controlled island that was
famous for cannibalism. So he was laying in the raft,
(24:51):
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 Pacific Ocean. They thank god, it was
an American submarine and they rescued George Herbert walker Bush. What
(25:13):
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. For the next seventy four years
(25:33):
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
should 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?
(25:55):
Why me? Why am I lucky enough to have a
loving and supporting God? Why am I lucky enough to
have a loving, supporting family. Why am I lucky enough
to live in Midland, Texas to have the opportunity to
be an oil man? Are 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,
(26:17):
living up 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
(26:40):
or complain. 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 say you know, why me when
(27:00):
we gets caught in traffic? George Herbert Walker Bush and
never complained today 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
(27:20):
Steve Jobs after thought, I encourage all you graduates to
do here today. 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.
(27:42):
You know, in early first and second century beat AD,
the Christian Church developed because those Christians were radical and
their song and you'll know we are Christians, buy our
love by our love. They did radical things all the time.
So I'm planning on doing something rative with my life
life before I leave here. So when I go up
(28:02):
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 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 importantly,
like George Herbert Walker Bush and did, and like Barbara
Bush did, we should make a difference. Thanks very much.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Your life to 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 Michael
(28:46):
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.
Director of Research is Sandy Peterson. Emily Bull is our
assistant listener and superfan. Contributions are appreciated and often incorporated
into our production. Where possible, we give credit, Where not,
(29:33):
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 suffering from PTSD, call Camp
Hope at eight seven seven seven one seven PTSD and
(29:58):
a combat veteran and will answer the phone to provide
free counseling.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
H
The Michael Barry Show, Mattress Mac Jim mackeveil 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. Mac 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.
(00:47):
Maybe you have kids home from college for the holidays.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
This is a.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
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
(01:24):
important that you don't go into marketing or accounting or
become a lawyer or a 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 get to work. I will tell you a story
(01:47):
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. The only problem is I started
out as a damn billionaire. But that's another story. So
a couple of years ago, I was trying to figure
out how to make these damn horses run faster, and
(02:09):
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 was born to a wealthy
(02:30):
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, you know. Her mother was
(02:51):
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 their father would have dinner parties
(03:13):
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 out of your comfort zone all
the time. Remember a tame time for Little Temple to
(03:35):
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 stalls every day. She didn't
(03:56):
want to do that, but she did it, and then
she soon found out 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 fell in love with cattle.
(04:17):
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 cowboyd because
she sees the world through a different lens. So fast forward.
Temple grand And went on to get a PhD in
(04:37):
Animal husband dry 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. And she's also one
(05:00):
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.
(05:21):
Her and I were talking 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
(05:43):
to do. You'll 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
(06:03):
back forty years 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 it 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,
(06:26):
Realize that work is 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
(06:49):
she was thirteen years old, 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 High School she goes to. And
(07:10):
her mother said, I just don't know what him to do.
So we took 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
(07:31):
in front of that child. The best thing y'all can
do is put her in 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
(07:52):
her in that mental health institute that Cole snowy February
day there in Kansas, and now all of her nightmares
were coming true. We were 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
(08:12):
the plate glass wall, screaming at her mother mind, please
don't leave me here, because you were going to leave
her that mentalisteuse for the rest of her life. And
she sat down on a couch and she cried and
she vomited, and this little girl came and put her
arm around her. Stood 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,
(08:35):
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, 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
(08:57):
Minegar for another eight weeks and got back out, and
then she had started helping other people with mental illnesses.
And you just 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
(09:18):
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 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
(09:44):
take care of a patient. Go make somebody's day. Human
beings were made to work. Next Mattress mac success tip.
This is one of my favorites. Get ready your sense
of entitlement. We should be grateful for everything and the
title to nothing. I got those kids that work for me,
(10:06):
several of them. They are now legal, but they they
swam the river coming here from Mexico, and they went
through the forest 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
(10:27):
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 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
(10:51):
called desire. You can do anything you want to do
in the great free enterprise system if you wanted to
do it bad enough. We're not living in venezuel 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,
(11:15):
quit whining and do something about it. Avail yourself of
continuous education. Education is the greatest gift I know of
it. 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.
(11:36):
I run on a treadmill every night because I'm too
old to run outside. But I watch these videos. I'm
watching this incredible video 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
(11:57):
young kid who was eight years old in Germany during
the Holocaust. He was Jewish. All 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 margarine they had left, and the kids screamed
(12:18):
at his father, So that's all we have to eat.
How could you possibly do that? And the father said,
my son, I have learned that 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 survive eighteen concentration camps. Eighteen concentration camps
(12:45):
lived to one hundred and one years old. 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
(13:06):
all this stuff on media now about not 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 gonna 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.
(13:27):
Fall seven, Rise eighty eight. They're gonna knock you down
a lot. 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
(13:49):
and look forward to those setbacks and charge into the fire.
Don't run away from it. Number six. You got to
innovate or evaporate. My mentor w Edwards Dimming said change
is not necessary. Survival is not mandatory. He said, change
is not necessary. Survival is not mandatory. As Bill said,
all of us gray haired people in here that are
(14:09):
in media have seen lots of changes in the last
forty years, and it continues to change all the time.
But you know 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
(14:30):
mortar retail is totally disrupted by Amazon and Wayfair and
all those people. It's a challenge. 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
(14:51):
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. 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,
(15:16):
she's the world's greatest people person. Her husband Ed is
the world's greatest people person. They know everybody in this
town that they don't know them, 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
(15:38):
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 you know, they're going to 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
(15:59):
life of opakeness. Shine a light on it, Get out front,
show what you do, what 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.
(16:23):
I have a racehorse. She was named after me. Her
name is Workaholic. But anyway, 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
(16:46):
her skin. But by shining a light on that muscle,
the muscle gets better. Shining a light on anything in
life makes things get better. Be terribly transparent in your life.
To hide transparency is good. Light is great. Number nine.
(17:10):
There's a woman here in Houston and all you kids
need to know about the scholarship recipients. Her name is
a von Strait. 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.
(17:32):
Back then, the age expectancy of a child with Down
syndrome was six years old. And Vonn was told she
went to all these doctors desperately searching for hope for
a child, and they all said hopeless situation, no chance.
But Avonn wouldn't give up on her child. So Vin
(17:53):
went on to start the Briarwood School for children with
learning disabilities like her child with Down syndrome. And then
she started Brookwood, 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
(18:17):
an adopted child named Regina. So I was trying to
get Regina into Briarwood. So I called a Vonn who
I knew, and she got Lindon Regina chance for an
interviewed at Briarwood, and they went up to Bridwood 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
(18:38):
took her home. Yvon called me the next day and said, Mac,
I said, what 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
(18:58):
ever had at bar which she said, own, no, not
buy a long child. So but who is? She said?
It had to be this boy named Tracy. I said, well,
tell me about Tracy's to Tracy was in one of
my first classes. He was Inngorgible. 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 school, but I didn't have the nerve to do it.
(19:19):
She said. Back then, we had three classrooms at a
Methist church over here in West Timer. Tracy would run
out in the middle of the street trying to get
cars to 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 Vonn's
down on the ground. Her and Tracy have a standoff
for about thirty minutes, and finally she gets Tracy to
(19:42):
come off the steeple onder the roof. He climbs into
a tree, comes off, the tree breaks, the limb off
goes over 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 Vonn says, no matter
what you do, I'm gonna straighten you out. I'm not
gonna give up on you. I will straighten you out
(20:03):
before you leave here. So Tracy stayed there another three
years and got better. Then he went off to high
school and Devonne hadn't seen him since. Fast forward thirty
years later, Evon's visiting her friends at Briarwood School. She's
now the chairman 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
(20:25):
are you? He said, oh yeah, mis Straight, you gotta
remember me. I was your favorite student. She said, no,
who are you? She said, miss Straight, Misstraight, 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
(20:45):
Levonne being a good text and thought that's not good.
The land of fruits and nuts. She said, Tracy, do
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. It ain't my show.
She says, no, I don't watch much television. She said,
what show are on? He said, I'm on chairs. See
(21:08):
what do you do? He said, I'm the bartender. His
name's Woody Harrelson. Bond Straight changed the world a couple
months ago. She's ninety one years old. She had a
fell and hit her head, had massive bleeding in her brain,
(21:31):
lost all of her memory for eighteen hours. She willed
her memory back. In eighteen hours, she willed it back.
She was at the hospital. I told her to say
for four or five days. After she willed her memory back,
she said, I have an appointment at Brooklynd with a
(21:51):
big donor. I'm out of here. Put her clothes on,
drove herself out there at ninety one years old. A
life force for good. Become a life force for good
with your life. Don't just make a lot of money,
make a lot of difference. Number ten, Why are we here?
(22:17):
I will take you back to September second, nineteen forty
four United States Navy aircraft carrier San Jacinto. It was
a beautiful Saturday. The youngest ever nable pilot at age nineteen,
(22:38):
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
on that island. As he neared the island where that
radio tower was, the air filled with anti aircraft bombs
(23:01):
bursting all around his airplane. The flag was unbelievable as
he got close, for his plane was hit by one
of those bombs, and he thought to himself, my God,
were gonna go down. Undatted, 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.
(23:23):
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.
Hit the silk as a Navy term for bailout. He
assumed they had bailed out. He righted the airplane kept flying.
(23:45):
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 the airplane. Giant gash on his head pulled
one of the rip cords, half of the hair at
parachute opened forgot to pull the other rip cord. He
(24:07):
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 of the he looked up in
the sky above him. It was Japanese and American planes
(24:28):
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 this Japanese controlled island that was
famous for cannibalism. So he was laying in the raft,
(24:51):
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 Pacific Ocean. They thank god, it was
an American submarine and they rescued George Herbert walker Bush. What
(25:13):
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. For the next seventy four years
(25:33):
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
should 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?
(25:55):
Why me? Why am I lucky enough to have a
loving and supporting God? Why am I lucky enough to
have a loving, supporting family. Why am I lucky enough
to live in Midland, Texas to have the opportunity to
be an oil man? Are 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,
(26:17):
living up 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
(26:40):
or complain. 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 say you know, why me when
(27:00):
we gets caught in traffic? George Herbert Walker Bush and
never complained today 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
(27:20):
Steve Jobs after thought, I encourage all you graduates to
do here today. 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.
(27:42):
You know, in early first and second century beat AD,
the Christian Church developed because those Christians were radical and
their song and you'll know we are Christians, buy our
love by our love. They did radical things all the time.
So I'm planning on doing something rative with my life
life before I leave here. So when I go up
(28:02):
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 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 importantly,
like George Herbert Walker Bush and did, and like Barbara
Bush did, we should make a difference. Thanks very much.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Your life to 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 Michael
(28:46):
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.
Director of Research is Sandy Peterson. Emily Bull is our
assistant listener and superfan. Contributions are appreciated and often incorporated
into our production. Where possible, we give credit, Where not,
(29:33):
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 suffering from PTSD, call Camp
Hope at eight seven seven seven one seven PTSD and
(29:58):
a combat veteran and will answer the phone to provide
free counseling.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
H
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