Episode 130 - Love Works with Joel Manby
Today's guest has over 25 years of CEO experience at major corporations, and he's got some wisdom to show for it. Joel Manby's most recent job was as the President and CEO of SeaWorld Parks and Entertainment.
Before that, he served as the CEO of Herschend Enterprises, the largest family-owned theme park and entertainment company in the United States with popular brands such as the Harlem Globetrotters and Dolly Parton’s Dollywood theme park and dinner theaters.
All that experience led him to write Love Works where he explains how to integrate love into the leadership ethos and philosophy of any organization. Let's hear him explain how...
Episode Transcript
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Joel Manby: I can't correct the mistakes I made in 2000, the 10 and 16 that led to the things I talked about. But I can be a completely honest man going forward. And my hero in the Bible right now is David, because he was a man after God's own heart, even though he did some pretty bad things. And that's the way that he's known now. And so that gives me hope. And so I would encourage anybody else, whatever they're trying to get corrected in their life. There is a future and just turn away from what you have done and all you can do is move forward in a positive fashion.
Rusty Rueff: Welcome back, everybody, to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast, I'm Rusty. Our guest today has over 25 years of CEO experience at major corporations and he's got some wisdom to show for it. Joel Man B's most recent job was as the president and CEO of SeaWorld Parks and Entertainment. But before that, he served as the CEO of Herschend Enterprises, the largest family owned theme park and entertainment company in the United States, with popular brands such as the Harlem Globetrotters and Dolly Parton's Dollywood theme park and many dinner theaters. All that experience led him to write a book detailing how to integrate love into the leadership, ethos and philosophy of any organization integrating love. Let's hear him explain how.
William Norvell: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast Joel Mamby in the House. Joel, thank you very much for being on the show.
Joel Manby: Well, thank you. It's fantastic to be here. Looking forward to it.
William Norvell: So there's a lot we want to cover today, but we'd like to give listeners first a taste of who you are as a person. Talk to us about your life growing up and then take us through your career in the auto industry. Sure, absolutely.
Joel Manby: I grew up in Battle Creek, Michigan. A lot of people may not know where that is, but it's where all the cereal companies started way back in the early nineteen hundreds. I actually grew up very poor. William, my dad made about 50 bucks a week for a three year period when his tractor dealership was going out of business. And it's a very formidable thought in my mind because I remembered all the fights in our home, all the tension between my parents. It was always about money. And I bring that up because partly I think I made some of my own wrong decisions in life because I had this fear of being like my mom and dad, being in a situation of, quote unquote, not having enough. And a lot of people, I think, grow up with that, this inherent fear. And it drove me a lot of drove me to be very entrepreneurial, very aggressive, not wanting to fail, hating, losing. But there was also a downside to it where as a believer, I really struggled, letting my faith take over and going where I think God was taking me no matter what, and not worrying about the dollar ramifications if anybody struggles with that. I can tell you, I wish now in hindsight, I've kind of reached the conclusion I reached at 40 or so that money really does not bring happiness. It is not an answer to things that can cause more problems than it solves. And yet I grew up probably the first 20 years, really driven by that fear of not having enough. Having said that, my parents were incredibly loving. I was able to go on to college, a small liberal arts college in Michigan called Albian. And then I went to Harvard for business school and eighty five and was able to do that just through scholarships and hard work. Not any funding from my parents. So that's the growing up part. Before I jump to the auto industry, any anything on that looks like you want to do something there.
William Norvell: No. Yeah, I know. I do want to ask you sound so I can't help it. As you know, in 1994, I met a girl who was driving this beautiful red Saab and I fell in love with a car. No, I did. I did. I love the car. But I fell in love with the woman and we ended up getting married. Oh, that's it. Yeah. So you're the CEO of Saab. So you talk to us about the work. As the CEO of Saab and part of me mourns the fact that some amount of our younger generation may not exactly know what I'm talking about. Yeah. Is iconic auto brand. Talk to us about your time there in the auto industry and then then you end up switching industries. You just kind of riff on that older at some of the lessons learned in the auto industry.
Joel Manby: Yeah, absolutely. When I when I graduate from business school, I spent the first five years at Saturn, which was a very innovative startup at the time. For those who don't remember, no house for shopping. So no negotiation. But because Saturn had a marginal car without standing outstanding marketing distribution, Saab on the other had had a fantastic car with very marginal marketing, inconsistent marketing and a really crappy distribution system. They brought me in from Saturn specifically to take over Saab. And that was my big break. That's I was only 35 within the General Motors system to be a president of one of their major divisions. Thirty five is unheard of. And it's really because of all the young people at Saturn that veterans didn't want to take that risk and Saturn. And so, in essence, what we had to do there was fascinating. The previous leadership had thought that Saab was overpriced, and so they tried to bring it down market and they took out a lot of turbo engines. They tried to get to price matching up with high end. Toyota's not up with BMW. And it was just a positioning mistake. So our task was to take the brand back upscale. We did everything turbocharge. We brought out these really special edition vehicles with very high horsepower, really nice wheels. So change the positioning. Here's a learning for your listeners, too. We did something very counterintuitive in the auto industry that executives of the auto companies think was just throw out more dealers, more dealers, more car sales. But as you know, in business, you have to focus. And all the Saab dealers were dual. They had other brands like Nissan or Toyota. So we insisted that our brands go solo. We loan them money in order to do so. So we actually decreased the number of dealerships, but the ones that were there, they were really, really killing it. And we doubled sales even though we took a number of dealerships down. So it's just a good lesson that a any entrepreneur can carve out a niche in a crowded market, but also that sometimes you have to be completely counterintuitive to find the answer. And that's not a credit to me. Yes, sir. But the team that came to me with ideas and I supported them, and that's a real short summary of what happened at Saab.
William Norvell: So I want to ask you, you know, there's this spot between Saab and SeaWorld that is super important because there's some really important lessons learned, I think, that really apply to our audience, which is green light. You've got this really neat Internet opportunity. Further into the auto industry, it didn't work out, but it could have talked to us about that.
Joel Manby: Yeah. When I was CEO, Saab was recruited by Green Light. Green Light was jointly owned by Kleiner Perkins, Asbury Automotive and Amazon. And the goal was to sell cars on Amazon.
And I still think it's the right idea today. It's basically the concept is they have the website that you can configure the car on Amazon. You get one price in the market. They have a variety of dealers going to offer that price close to your home.
And then the dealership would pay Amazon a marketing fee. And if, you know, you get one percent of the auto industry, it's billions of dollars and it certainly can get there.
That was the basic concept. There's a couple of huge lessons for any entrepreneur. Listen to this. One is they sound really stupid, but the CEO at the time was not entirely honest person and he convinced some of the investors not to have audited financials in the early years. Turns out he wasn't telling the truth and it was a finagling on all of us, including me, for taking the job without an audit financials. So we were actually burning through more cash. And I thought was less than one lesson, too, was, you know, as soon as the Nasdaq, the Nasdaq literally dropped 35 percent, my first day of work, 50 percent by the end of the week. So what we thought was a three year cash burn window to get public and get cash flowing became 90 days. Now, as a GM executive, I just didn't have the experience of how important daily cash flow was. And I literally just waiting a couple of weeks to take aggressive, aggressive action. I wish now that first night, you know, we should have been doing a lot more even that first week. So move quickly. Absolutely. Feel cash going out your pocket like it's your own cash. And I learned that the hard way. And then thirdly, it's just bad timing. And there's nothing really you can do about bad timing. But I do have a little bit of a regret. Sometimes I didn't go back to Jeff Bezos or some other firm and say, now's the time, because no brand has taken it on themselves and really done what Amazon could have done with their power and their clout. So there was definitely a timing problem as well.
William Norvell: Well, you get a sense that it's not too late. And I don't know if Jeff is listening to this podcast. I assume he listens to most of them, but it seems like a great idea that could come. But yet you're a hundred percent right. Is that there are so many great ideas that people have. I think about the original rollout of this software as a service industry, way back when when it's called the HSP World Application Service Provider. It was absolutely the right idea, the right idea behind the industry. But it is just 10 years early. And if those guys just held on for another 10 years, they would have made a ton of money with software as a service. And so do you have any type of cash is so hard to do. And this is kind of the holy grail of any question that you'd ask on something like this to not ignore. But what's your sense? How do you know that the market is ready or where there's just something you just have got to have to kind of sit on for 10 years? Is there any way to do that?
Joel Manby: I think really being intellectually honest with entrepreneurs were so positive about our ideas. And we can see the glass half full and we see all the positive opportunity. I think really listening that people who are experts and when they put up a red flag, if you feel your internal emotions saying, well, that guy does, nobody's talking about or I'm not going to listen to them. That's ego. And that's a huge red flag to listen to the industry experts. They may be too conservative, but what they're saying is wrong with the idea has to be listened to. And for me, it was not listening enough to the. But in the franchise business said you have no idea how strong the franchise power is of the dealers and to try to go around them. You know, it's going to be impossible. I didn't listen to that enough. Now, in the model I describe you, the pivot would have included dealers. So we were fine there. But it's just a good learning to be very intellectually honest and listen carefully when someone pushes back on your idea. And be honest about it.
William Norvell: One of the concepts we talk about a lot on the show is the difference between being willful and faithful. And there's a spiritual discipline in all this, too, about really getting down on our knees and praying and fasting about the direction that God would have a sin. And then sometimes it means going head against and being a contrarian. All the experts are saying one thing going in different direction, but the mistakes I've made on time in my career have been if I've really just kind of boiled down, I been willful. I remember how I felt at the time and I'd been willful.
Joel Manby: And I would agree with that. One of the GM executives who's trying to stop me from leaving. Ron Zarella, who is head of marketing at the time. He said, you're not seeing this piece. And I was just too willful. And that was the piece that really hurt us. And I could have bought more time if I had listened to him. But know that all comes with experience. I love that willful explanation.
William Norvell: Okay. So iconic brand, and I love that deal. More deepened at another time. But ours is not an auto podcast's. It's about Faith driven entrepreneurs. And then you go in to a very entrepreneurial environment, a family driven, founded media and entertainment themepark business. So something completely different. If you say what's the opposite of Saab, maybe theme parks might be the opposite. I don't know how that happened.
Joel Manby: It's the ultimate question people always wonder. And it's completely God's story. And, you know, we could talk for an hour just on this, but I'll save you that.
I'll give you a brief answer. But I do these podcasts, a I do want to talk about love works as we will. But I also want people to understand that sometimes what they're feeling at 20 and 30 is OK. When I was in my 20s and 30s, I was deep in my faith, but I also was called to the marketplace. I really believe that. But in the auto industry, I did not see examples of servant leadership for the most part. I did not see caring leaders. They cared about one thing, and that's if you hit the numbers, you got to come to work the next week. And it was fear based. There was autocratic and it was not bringing out innovation. It wasn't bring out the best of me. So literally, William, for about my first 20 years from 20 to 38. I had this angst inside. I knew there had to be a better way to lead. I knew that Jesus wouldn't necessarily be proud of the way I was leading in the fear based kind of culture that I was around. And when I was on the board at Herschend, I was a board member first. I saw this incredible environment, the Sea Park, how the owners loved the employees and the employees. Turnover was virtually nothing and their engagement scores were high and they kept coming back in a seasonal business year after year. I thought this is what I always thought it should be like. This is how people should enjoy coming to work. And so when he asked me if this was the God part, when I greenlight dot com, which I went after SOB that had to be sold in a fire towards sale, basically he asked me to be CEO of Herschend. Huge pay cut. God had to answer a board seat prayer just to get me to the kind of bare minimum took this risk because I wanted an answer to how can you lead in a faith based or just in any business, not necessarily a Christian market. I want to be in a secular market and lead a certain way. And that's what Jack and Pete Herschend taught me when I went to Herschend Entertainment.
That's why I made the transition and Herson had SeaWorld, but it also had actually didn't have zero.
Herschend had all the Dolly Parton stuff. Got it done. I left Herschend to go to SeaWorld later, but Hershon had Dolly Parton and Flo. It did have the Harlem Globetrotters. Absolutely.
Rusty Rueff: So who who is your favorite globetrotter?
William Norvell: You know, I got to tell, this is a funny story. You like stories, Rusty, but growing up as a kid, always with the Globetrotters games with my dad. That was the one thing we always did together. And Curly Neal was huge back then. He was the guard who could dribble all over the place and just pass away this year. He did pass away this year. And so when we purchased the Globetrotters, I go to the gym to talk to the players and tell them what's going on. And they're in the front row is Curly Neal, who is a lifetime employee of the Globetrotters. So here I am.
Joel Manby: Is the owner, if not an owner, CEO Hirschson talking to Curly Neal in front of me. I was just in awe. And the curse. Meadowlark Lemon also was big. He passed away before. But I tell you, the Globetrotters. What a special team and a special group of players. They're all college grads. Really sharp. Humble, smart people who give a lot of their time and effort to promote ambassadorship and what more do we need than that right now in this country? They play a big role in bringing the race issue to the forefront.
William Norvell: Now, Rusty, I would've gone to the DAI angle. Huge. Dolly Parton fan. And there's a new podcast actually out by the guys that do Radiolab about Dolly's life. And so it's a great podcast. Have you listened to it? Yeah, I have it. It's very, very, very good. Give me a completely new appreciation for life, her brilliance as a songwriter.
Joel Manby: You know, not to interrupt you, but if is, you know, send me your address. If I still have any magic, we could maybe get an autographed picture of her. But that's no guarantee anymore. It's a big deal.
Rusty Rueff: Okay. Okay. Henry wants to stop right now. Yeah. Like, cut this podcast off and let's just go go to that. So, yeah, absolutely. We're not going to do that.
Joel Manby: Where I will tell you she is. She is exactly what you expect. She is just like she is on camera, just so warm and friendly. And you talk about sharp and smart and able to respond to the press. She says stuff that you and I could never say and get away with. But get that right. I know some of those lines right now. Well, yeah, she's so fantastic and very generous.
William Norvell: You have a distinction here, Joel, because you're our first guest. And maybe you'll be our only guest. But right now, you're our first guest. That has been on The Undercover Boss. Yes. So, you know, before we go any further, we talk about the book and all the other great things you've done. You got to give us the behind the scenes thing about the undercover boss and how the heck do do people not recognize the boss?
Joel Manby: Yeah, it's it's an obvious question. First of all, we did the first season, so nobody knew about the show. It had been filmed before the first one came out. What they were told is you were being filmed for training videos for that company. And I was an ex auto worker that was looking for a job. And so they were getting trained on how they were training me so that they could improve. And I went to properties where I was new or hadn't gone because we were doing so many acquisitions. So for me, I can legitimately say nobody knew. I think as the program went on and it became more popular, I think the second, third four seasons, it became more and more difficult. But truly, truly, nobody knew I was CEO of the company. And it led to some really hilarious situations.
Rusty Rueff: Yeah, I just to watch the show. I mean, how could you not. Right. But every now and then I would go and I have a friend who was actually on it for work. He will go unnamed because the fact that he was never recognized was probably because he never got out anywhere with the employees. Right. And so I used to look at it, go, oh, geez, do you know it's a double edged sword?
Joel Manby: Yeah. So both sides of that pose for me when we went to subvert our city, which I had been to a lot. They took all the front gate people out for a break and they brought the maintenance people that do the night shift that I had never met. They came into fake running the gate to get around it. So I was very active. But you're right. That's that's a problem. They'd been there for too long. The employees don't recognize them. But it was really, really a great show.
Rusty Rueff: Yeah. So let's switch gears and let's go to your book. So you're now an author. Tell us about why you wrote it. What do you want us to get out of it? And we'll definitely linked the book at our Web site. But talk to us about that.
Joel Manby: Sure. Rusty. The book is called Love Works, its seventh Timeless Principles for Effective Leaders. And I spoke earlier and Williams question about getting into theme parks was because of this angst, I felt as a human being that I want to live out my faith that work. I wasn't finding it very productive. And I had this I call it cognitive dissonance. I thought it was just me. But when we were on Undercover Boss. And luckily we followed the NC double a quarter file. So we had 20 million people view our program, which was second only to American Idol out of luck. But because of that, we were inundated at Herschend with requests for either jobs or how did you guys do this? Why is the culture so great? Our employees aren't as passionate. I realize Rusty in a lot of people were saying, I want to work for a company like yours. I'm dissatisfied with leadership. We should expect more from leadership from all that. I said I'm going to write a book about this because it wasn't just me feeling the same. I betcha all the hundreds of thousands of listeners you guys have. There's a lot of people out there. Have a faith. They want to act it out and they don't know how in the secular workplace. And so that's why I wrote the book. And it had a really great response. But then I added two chapters in this past year because I came out 2012 Christmas SeaWorld experience had some real thorns in it and some failures and some successes. And I had a huge, huge personal failure that I felt for me to go forward as an honest and authentic person. I needed to rewrite a couple of chapters in the book and admit my own failures. And so there's a new addition. Now, that has those two new chapters over works, which is all about meeting with love, which we can talk about more if you want.
Rusty Rueff: So the word A got a you know, as we know is that love of Christ, the Christian love. How come we don't use that word in the business world first?
Joel Manby: I think it's a language issue. I mean, you said it Rusty people don't think of it as a gap. When we think of love as Americans, we think what the Greeks call Eros, which is where erotic comes from. It's emotion. And when you talk servant leadership or loving leadership with most entrepreneurs deep inside of thinking, that's too soft for me.
Where I'm not going to get results, I need to get results. And that's not what I'm talking about, is not love the emotion. It's love. The verb gappy, which is a behavior. It's unconditional. I can dislike someone and still treat them where they got a love. And it happens to also get great business results. So that's why people I think more people don't do it. They think there's the soft and the wrong and they believe it might not get the results. And it does.
Rusty Rueff: And as a CEO, because we have CEOs and founders as our listeners here. Can you just go a little deeper into that? How can they express that? How can they use that word as part of their leadership principles?
Joel Manby: Yes, I think all entrepreneurs do what I would call the do. Goals. They developed the Duke goals. I have to make more profit, more sales, more margin. What have you if you're an American or any. Doesn't matter. American. And if you're a business person. You're going to have two goals. Well, we talk about in this book our big goals.
What kind of leader do I want to be? And it is the definition of love. And I got a I got a version of love that Paul defines in First Corinthians 13. And his obviously book to the Corinthians. And those seven words are being patient, being kind, trusting, truthful, dedicated, forgiving and unselfish. And we go through and define those words. Eighty percent of business is out there.
Rusty have their plaque with their values on the wall. But according to Gallup, which goes into this every year, only about 10 percent integrated into their culture in any way. We do it through big goals and we rate people just as much and their goals as on their Duke goals. And both SeaWorld and Saab, we spent a lot of time on the processes. And if we have time, we can go there. But that's why most servant leadership culture changes fail is it's just words on a plaque. It's not worked into the company.
Rusty Rueff: OK, so the book is Love Work Somewhere. Let William jump in here in a second. But you mentioned those last two chapters. You want to give us a preview of what those last two chapters were and kind of what inspired them, because it sounds like it moved you enough to go back and revisit it again.
Joel Manby: Yeah, I will try to articulate it. It's very painful in some ways. The SeaWorld part, there were just some really good leadership learnings from the mistakes and the very good decisions we made. And it was a crisis of epic proportions. If you want to go into that, it's probably one of the worst CEO jobs at that time in the country. But because I handled that in a way that I was so driven to not let it fail, I worked way too much. I was under a lot of stress, no sleep, seven days a week and literally 20 hours a day that the second chapter is about the dysfunction that that caused in my own life. I definitely medicated the pain more than I should. I ended up long story short, it's a bad story, but ended up losing my marriage while I was at Saab, which is something I never dreamed would happen, I never thought would happen. I still in some ways, you know, it's just as a bad, bad thing. So within six months after that, I actually ended up resigning from SeaWorld for a variety of reasons, mostly some of the investors that came in. I just was not aligned with them at all. And we agreed to part ways. But I write the chapter because everyone is going to go through a really tough time in their life and so many times on podcasts and social media and Facebook, everybody paints this positive image. And I think that's why suicides are going up and anxiety is going up and depression is going up. People compare themselves to some idealistic thing. I wanted to be honest about the dysfunction in my own life, the self-destructive behavior in my own life that led to my marriage ending and other things. And that also let people know that there is another side of that rainbow. You do get to the other side not to give up, not to give up on God's ability to use you. And I wanted to be an honest man going forward. And I didn't think I could do that if I didn't redo the book. So sorry, that wasn't a crisp answer. But I think it's actually it's a more powerful book now than it even was when we just talked about love.
Rusty Rueff: Now, thanks for sharing that, but it's powerful when we hear the stories that people are willing to tell. Right. You know, there's lots of stories. And so what do you when you're willing to tell it? That's when we can all identify. So thank you for that.
Joel Manby: You're welcome. And if I can bring up one other person from, you know, kind of fallen into the same duffed, self-destructive pattern that I did under the stress that I was under, I know there's people going through that right now. There's no way there's not with Kobe going on. So if I can stop one person, then it's worth all this time effort.
William Norvell: Your man, Joel, and I just agree, I've been in First Corinthians for the past couple of weeks and it's just astounding how it jumps off the page that Paul continues to say some version of God gives you these stories for others. Yeah, right. He doesn't give them all for yourself. He gives them so that you'll tell others and help them on the journey to become more like Jesus. And I think so often people won't share the stories they really need to be shared.
Joel Manby: You know, you said it. It's just it's really tough because every instinct in your body says don't share it because people will think you're a loser or you're not successful or, you know, all the wrong reasons. And I think that's Satan telling us not to share it, because you're right, there's nowhere in the Bible every everybody was flawed in the Bible except maybe Jesus. But I appreciate you saying that.
William Norvell: I appreciate you. And and I hope people all find that chapter and go a layer deeper and get a lead and discuss things with others. And I want to shift back a little bit because I do think we probably have entrepreneurs that end up in tough situations. And, you know, you mentioned it a few times, but I want to go one layer deeper on the SeaWorld experience. So for those that timestamp when you joined, I believe it was right after Blackfish documentary. And so SeaWorld was in the midst of a massive PR crisis, which I assume that bottom line crisis and all of those things. But yet you felt, you know, called can be an overused term sometimes, but you felt a yearning to go take that task on. Could you tell us a little bit about walking into a crisis and maybe what prepared you maybe what you weren't prepared for as well, and maybe just walk us through that a little bit?
Joel Manby: That's a great, great question. When to set it up a little bit for your audience? The CEO before me is when the movie had come out, but because the stock dropped 50 percent, the board was not pleased with the reaction to the film. And there's certainly two sides of that story. But he was let go. I was brought in our EBITDA or cash flow. For those not familiar with the knack for our cash flow is down 50 percent and in a fixed costs business like theme parks. You know, we're run out of cash trying to get more money cut and staff left and right, but doing it the right way. The best we could. Extremely stressful. But on top of that, we had Peter, which is an activist animal firm, if you want to call a firm, it really used terrorist tactics. They're protesting my home, threatening me on the phone. I can't prove it was them. But he has some very threatening phone calls protesting our parks every week. So it is a PR nightmare. Our favor, ability ratings for the American public went from 65 percent positive to only 30 percent in 18 months. And you just don't see big brands drop like that very often. So came into a real hotbed. I can say on the positive side, we had a great plan. I worked really hard with the board within 90 days. We had our ten point plan, what we're going to do, including pivoting the brand away from animal entertainment, cutting a lot of costs, obviously, but keeping animal quality, actually beefing up other animal programs outside of killer whales, but also just adding a lot of variety to our guests experience outside of animal shows. So over time, we knew zoos and aquariums and that whole industry as a lowering tide. It's getting less and less popular to have animals in captivity. So we were trying to pivot the brand. And I think our vision for that was extremely good. But at the same time, we had to balance, as you know, and these meltdown situations, we had to balance the day to day. And so I felt I did very well was establish a plan, moved very quickly. We over communicated to our team where we headed. And I also restructure the organization into instead of following our normal structure. I had the really creative types and the the dreamers helping with the long term vision and the not so much so maybe more the accounting team helping me figure out how to stay alive month by month. That went really well. I think what didn't go so well and where if I had do it all over again, I would do it differently. Now, I think some entrepreneurs will relate to this if they have boards. I went through a lot of board dysfunction and publicly I have to be careful what I say. But I had 100 percent turnover. A lot of people didn't want to stay on the board when it had so much public hair on it. Public PR mess. And I had more power than I thought. I had a CEO. I was trying to get the board coalesced as they kept changing. And a lot of different opinions. I should have just either changed them out or said, look, either vote yes or give me a better idea because we have to move quickly. And I think in the balance of staying alive and going to division, I spent too much time on the going to the vision, trying to get unity of the board. I think that was a mistake. Another mistake was certainly the. Balance in my own life. I didn't stay healthy myself, and therefore I started making mistakes. And that did not help the turnaround. And I think we had a two active investors come in that just this is going to sound contrary to what I've been saying. But I tried really hard to work with them to do what they wanted so that we could keep the team together and keep the vision going. In hindsight, my instinct was the moment I met them, I knew we weren't bonded. We didn't think alike. We didn't think same thing about people. And I probably should have called a spade a spade and gotten out faster. I think I would have saved my health and my marriage if I had done that. I think sometimes you can trust too much and be truthful too long. And if you're not aligned with somebody, I think it's time to get out. And I learned that the hard way at fifty nine years old. And it's something I wish I had known when I was 35. You know, every deal is a 35 year old. Kind of looks pretty good until you really start to dig into the negatives and dig into who you're going to work with. So those are some of the pros and cons of my SeaWorld time.
William Norvell: That's really helpful. It's really interesting. And as a 37 year old, I'm listening closely.
Joel Manby: Well, I didn't mean to direct that any anybody. I just know that I was so much more optimistic about people in, you know, who you're aligned with and who you're yoked to. It is so important. And I'll even give you guys Kudo's. You're in the private equity world. I've worked with two of the best and probably one of the worst. And, you know, Kleiner Perkins and Blackstone, they were just fantastic people to work with. And some of the others, not so much.
William Norvell: Yeah, that is a topic we've hit on a lot here. And I think we've heard similar themes. So good to hear about your experiences, because it always is interesting to hear how people had different experiences and and how that aligned vision, if you can have it around a faith. That's amazing. But if not around similar values and dreams, it can still do an amazing story. And as we've been talking about your history, I want to save enough time to go forward and hear about what you're up to now. I know I've heard you've teamed up with our friend Reggie Joyner at Orange, but doing some fun stuff with some of our other podcasts. Yes, but give us a little bit about where you are today, what you're up to, and then let our audience into your world a little bit.
Joel Manby: Absolutely. I am chairman of Orange, which for those of you don't know, it's one of the largest church leadership companies in America and actually the world. We have 10000 partners in 42 countries. Reggie and I were together from the beginning. I was kind of a money guy that helped raise the money so he could leave Northpoint. And when he did, it's just the rest is history is a brilliant mind. I think it's the most strategic approach to what we teach our children in the church or now in the home more and more because of Koban and people staying at home. So our focus is helping not only churches, but parents teach biblical values to their kids. And so I do spend a lot of time there. I also do have a Web site. Joel Manby dot com. I'm starting to develop videos on how to transform a culture like LUB works or whatever set of words people want to use and blogging and just being available to consult and help other companies who want to have cultural transformation to servant leadership. That's where my heart is. And if I only focus on that the rest of my days, I feel like that's where God called me from an experience standpoint and a passion standpoint. So if anybody is interested in speaking or consulting on the topic or helping their organizations transform their cultures, it's Gell-Mann become.
And that's unless the Lord calls me a different direction. As long as I'm healthy, that's what I believe I will be doing.
Rusty Rueff: Just just so you know, I'm a big so-and-so show guy. Are you really? Absolutely. Oh, yes.
William Norvell: So contacts. Rusty so excited about the so-and-so show about as excited as Hindry was about Dolly Parton.
Joel Manby: Part of me and my guy, in fact, really well informed on her. Exactly.
Rusty Rueff: Callan's my guy. He's amazing.
Joel Manby: Reggie Joyner has to surround himself with the creative geniuses and they are funny. John Williams is one of the funniest guys I've ever met. So it's fun to be around those folks. And I just with comedy, we all we all struggle a little bit. And with churches not buying curriculum, we're going through our own issues. But we'll we'll manage it. And it's a great organization.
Rusty Rueff: Yeah. There's nothing like. Well, there was something like it. It was called Veggie Tales. And we've had Phil Fisher on the show. Oh, have you. Yeah, I did. To see that on your list. Right. But we know you. So if you're trying to occupy kids for an hour and you just can't get your act together. Used to be you would give them veggie tales. Now we give them a so-and-so show. And that is just. Like they're just so wrapped up in it. You know, there's all the double entendres that we you know, the adults were all laughing while they're laughing. Sometimes we don't know why. It's like a Pixar movie.
Joel Manby: Yeah. And it's a huge compliment. Rusty. If people are interested now, they can on our parent cue app for parents. We have the so-and-so show on there and we're starting to build a bigger audience, direct a parent, because many parents say what you say, the quality is so good, I'm going to do it. You know, the interesting fun fact it wasn't so fun fullfil, but at Herschend we tried to buy. But you us when they got in trouble after the movie and I'm sure Phil talked about at least the troubles he went through. But what a creative genius he is. And we see each other on the speaking tour every now and then. He's just a fantastic human being.
William Norvell: Yes, he is. We have to come to a close now, Joel. And then one of the things we love to do at the end is try to end on God's word that continues to live and teach us all each day. And we love to see how God bridges our guest and our listeners together through a scripture. And so we love just ask you, Dad. We invite you, rather, to just tell us where God may have you meditating on his word. And that could be something you've been meditating on for years or in this season or something he showed you this morning.
But if you wouldn't mind, just slightness know and let us in a little bit as you've been so gracious to do it during this podcast. We'd really appreciate it.
Joel Manby: My answer to is on a daily basis. I've really tried to focus on JEREMI nine. Twenty one is my life vs. it's about don't boast about your strength or your wisdom or your intellect. Boast about your relationship with God. And I think for too long in my life I spoke those words, but I didn't put them to the forefront. And the season of my life that I've really been trying to work on is I can't correct the mistakes I made in 2000, 13 and 16 that led to the things I talked about. But I can be a completely honest man going forward. And my hero in the Bible right now is David, because he was a man after God's own heart, even though he did some pretty bad things. And that's the way that he is known now. And so that gives me hope. And so I would encourage anybody else, whatever they're trying to get corrected in their life. There is a future and just turn away from what you have done and all you can do is move forward in a positive fashion.
And that's what I've tried to do. It starts with even, you know, my golf score or if I golf, it's every stroke. Now, there's no shaving. There's no give me putts. You know, it starts with the smallest little things and can edge into the big things. So that's the best. My answer.
Rusty Rueff: Note to self, if you don't want pets to be given, don't play withdrawal.
Joel Manby: Well, instead of eight instead of eighteen inches. Oh, okay. All right, good. I mean, no investors. Those butts. Oh, no. No. For me, I'm not that strict. I'm strict on myself, not on others.
William Norvell: This is a good place. Dan. Joel, thank you so much. Yeah. The light. David, I listen to a great sermon about that a few months ago and said, you know, do you ever think God might put that story in there because we're all just on the edge going down that path. And we have such a great vision of his entire life and his thoughts for that exact reason. So thank you for pointing that out. And thank you for joining us. Pleasure. It was a blast.