Timeless Secrets of Success with Mitzi Perdue: An EOFire Classic from 2021

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation! JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire! Brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Success Story Podcast. Today, we're pulling a timeless EO Fire episode from the archives, so the giveaway may not be active, and we'll be breaking down timeless secrets of success. To drop these value bombs, I have brought Mitzi Perdue into EO Fire Studios. Mitzi's father co-founded the Sheraton Hotel chain, and her husband was the poultry magnate Frank Perdue. She is the founder of Win This Fight, Stop Human Trafficking Now.

0:36And today, Foundation will talk about anything that makes people less vulnerable or to make human trafficking less likely. And every success that comes your way in life depends on being able to get along with people and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Mitzi and our sponsors. The Hustle Daily Show, hosted by Juliet Bennett-Ryla, Rob Litturse, Ben Berkley, and Mark Dent, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the ideal destination for business professionals. The Hustle Daily Show brings you a healthy dose of irreverent, offbeat, informative takes on business and tech news, like a recent episode on hackers versus casinos, where the hosts talk about MGM Resorts and Caesars Entertainment and the devastating potential of cyber attacks.

1:16Listen to The Hustle Daily wherever you get your podcasts. Don't be the bottleneck to your organization's growth. Accomplish more with Belay. To get started, schedule a free delegation consultation with Belay in just 30 minutes. See how their flexible staffing solutions can grow your business and free you up to lead. Text FIRE to 55123 to schedule your delegation consultation today. Mitzi, say what's up to FIRE Nation and what is something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with? All right. Pretty much all my life, I've heard people say, you know, you really need balance in your life.

1:55Don't be a workaholic. Well, I couldn't disagree more. I love both in my late husband, who was Frank Perdue, founder of a company that employed 20 ,000 people at the time of his death. Okay, he was somebody who I wouldn't describe as having a balanced life. And my late father, I think he was a workaholic as well. And I kind of think that workaholism is what gets you to the great rewards and satisfaction in life. It's kind of hard to change the world or even have a massive impact on the world, Fire Nation, if you're not willing to put in the work. And hey, when we say the word work, what if you're doing something you love every single day?

2:36How else do you really want to be spending your time? I mean, I'm listening to a fantastic interview about Walt Disney right now and hearing his inspiration and how he lived his life to the very end doing what he loved. I mean, it's inspiring. And we're talking today with Mitzi about timeless secrets of success. And I want to talk about success secrets with you, Mitzi, because you're going to share with us some of the success secrets that built the Sheraton Hotel chain. Break that down for us. All right. My late father was the founder of the Sheraton, well, he was co-founder along with my uncle of the Sheraton Hotel chain.

3:13He was also president. And speaking of work-life balance, Actually, I do think he got it kind of right. But he was as much a workaholic as you can imagine. Because, as you pointed out, it's possible not to work a day in your life if you just love what you're doing. And I think that he really loved what he was doing. But he didn't start out being somebody that you would ever predict would be right for the hospitality industry. and when he started and it was pretty much um he started the sheraton hotel chain in the 1930s but before that up to age 26 he had never been able to stick with anything in his life and at age 26 he'd gotten engaged to my mother and my grandmother told my mother her her future daughter-in-law, don't marry Ernest.

4:09He can never stick to anything. And so how does somebody who seems like such a poor marriage prospect that his own mother says, don't marry Ernest, how does that person convert into somebody who is a major success? And I would love to share with you how he transformed himself. I'm worried that I'm monologuing too much. Are you okay with a monologue? Look, Mitzi, we're loving what you're kicking out here. Believe me, I will break in each and every time. We need to have a little back and forth. But what exactly is those success secrets? I have to give a little bit of background. At age 26, he had this wake-up call from his mother saying to his future wife, don't marry him, because he could never stick to anything.

4:58So he went to a career guidance counselor, and the guidance counselor spent eight hours giving him every test you can think of. And we're talking like 1923 right now. Well, the guidance counselor at the end of all this testing said, Mr. Henderson, I've never seen somebody with worse human relations skills. You probably could make a pretty good success if you chose a career in science because you're a smart fellow. But it would be working in a laboratory and not interacting with anybody. Unpromising start for somebody in the hotel industry, right? Seriously. Okay, well, Father took this as a challenge because, and he told me this, he said, as far as he could see, every success that you have that comes your way in life depends on being able to get along with people.

5:48And so pretty much the rest of his life, he studied everything that he could about what makes people tick. He read psychology courses. He took the Dale Carnegie course. He took salesmanship courses. he took speaking courses and he told me that he read how to win friends and influence people every 10 years he'd read it all over again so and he also you know he would read books in psychology and later on in life when he became you know a success you know a titan in the hotel industry and by the way he at the time of his death the family owned 400 hotels wow well when he became of a major league success, he was eminent enough so that he could invite some of the major psychologists of the time for weekends at our country home.

6:40And so I grew up with, these were famous at the time, but B.F. Skinner, Eddie Bernays, I mean, he made a lifelong study of what make people tick. And the end result was he got so good at inspiring people, at getting people to stay with him for life, being willing to go the extra mile in every case, that at the end of his life, he employed 20 ,000 people, each one of them who were playing, as far as I can tell, a major role in making the Sheraton Hotel a success, Hotel Chain a success. I mean, Fire Nation, there's one thing that is absolutely true. Success leaves clues. success leaves clues and guess what we are also as entrepreneurs as human beings standing upon the shoulders of giants like i'm standing in this room today with lights on with electricity with you know chairs and desks because people before me have come and perfected these type of things we are all standing upon the shoulders of giants i mean mitzi where are you located in the world right now i'm in salisbury maryland population maybe 40 000 i'm in southeastern puerto rico And yet here we are, and we feel like we're essentially in the same room together, having a live conversation that you, Fire Nation, are hearing in one of the 145 countries around the world that this podcast is listened to on a daily basis.

8:04So you need to just think that this is amazing. And it didn't just snap our fingers and happen. Success leaves clues. And what happened with what everything Mitzi is sharing, those people who she's learned from and that she's actually implemented in her life as well, she's followed their success, their knowledge. She stood upon the shoulders of giants like we all have. So, Mitzi, before we go on, I'd like your opinion on that. What are your thoughts on that success leaves clues that we all stand upon the shoulders of giants? How have you seen that specifically in your life? Well, I'm certainly standing on the shoulders of my late father because he impressed on me the importance of human relations.

8:44And, you know, an interesting thing, both my late father, who employed 20 ,000 people. My late husband, Frank Perdue, also employed 20 ,000 people and both started with no employees and grew their companies. And both of them, if you had asked them, which I did, what's the secret of your success? Both of them said it's the employees at every level. And allow me to share a story that kind of illustrates, at least in my father's case, what it takes to inspire people to go the extra mile? Yeah, please do. Thank you. Okay, my father told me that when he first would take over a hotel, and he started during the Great Depression when there was 25 % unemployment, the hotels that he would take over were always ones that were teetering on bankruptcy.

9:37The ones where you could buy a hotel for pennies and the dollar because everybody was getting out of real estate and hotels as fast as they could. Well, he said when he'd take over a hotel, he'd invite every single person who worked at the hotel to come into the hotel's ballroom. And he said that he knew ahead of time that everybody in his audience would be totally demoralized and afraid. You know, they're afraid they're going to lose their job. And if you lose your job during the Great Depression, you're not going to get another. That meant the bread line. And so because he had studied enough human relations, I think possibly to have a better understanding of what makes people tick than any of his competitors did.

10:19He told me the first words out of his mouth were always to his audience. When he's addressing them and meeting them for the first time, the first words out of his mouth were always, I want you to keep your job. and the reason I want you to keep your job is I know that you know your job better than anybody else in the whole world and my job in this grand enterprise is to give you the resources and the encouragement to show the world just how great you are and you'll see in the next few months this hotel is going to turn around it's going to be the most successful the most financially stable hotel in the whole city and even better, we're going to be an example to every other company that darkest things are, that things can turn around.

11:09And so, you know, he told me that part of his reason for taking that approach was he said, people have a compulsion to live up to or down to your expectations. And he wanted to show them that he believed in them. But that wasn't enough just by itself. he said the next day the employees would see just dozens of work people like decorators or plumbers or electricians and that I'll be coming in to refurbish the hotel, which you need to if a hotel has been on the verge of bankruptcy. But the important part, he told me, of having these people come in to refurbish the hotel is that they never went first to the areas that the paying public would see.

11:55no they'd go first to the areas that only the only the employees would be part of like the employed dining rooms or or living or uh showers or lockers or or corridors those were the first places that he'd ever spruce up and so of course i asked him you know why do you do that and he said it's a leader's job to give people a better vision of themselves and if he shows how much confidence he has in them by putting the first money into refurbishing the employee areas that this gave people a better vision of themselves. Cool? Mitzi, that's so cool. And one thing that I love that you shared amongst a lot of things, by the way, but one thing I want to pull out is people will live up to or down to your expectations.

12:50Fire Nation, please think about those words. What expectations are you putting on your employees? What expectations are you putting on your business partners, your loved ones, your kids, like people who you interact with? They will live up or down to your expectations. And especially in that employee employer relationship that Mitzi is referring to. And if you think we're even close to being done dropping value bonds, Fire Nation, you get another thing coming as soon as we get back from thinking our sponsors. The fourth quarter is here. It's time to hit your revenue targets, finish strong, and win the quarter.

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14:39Belay's flexible staffing solutions can match you with the help you need now and scale with you as you grow. Their virtual assistants, accounting professionals, and social media managers can free you up to focus on what matters most. Don't be the bottleneck to your organization's growth. Accomplish more with Belay. To get started, schedule a free delegation consultation with Belay in just 30 minutes. See how their flexible staffing solutions can grow your business and free you up to lead. Text FIRE to 55123. That's F-I-R-E to 55123 to schedule your delegation consultation today. Kate and I love home-cooked meals.

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15:56Oh, and did I mention that HelloFresh is America's number one meal kit? Go to hellofresh.com slash 50EOF and use code 50EOF for 50 % off plus free shipping. That's 50 % off plus free shipping when you visit hellofresh.com slash 50EOF and use code 50EOF. Mitzi, we're back and let's be frank. Human trafficking is an incredibly monstrous problem in this world right now, today. So what on earth does human trafficking have to do with success? My theory is that most of our audience would share what I think that you would feel and that I certainly feel, that at the end of your days, you want to look back on your life and think, I've done something.

16:51and preferably you've done something that's made the world a better place and with human trafficking I think it's one of the darkest activities on the face of the planet and anything that anybody can do whether it's big or small to help get rid of this horror I think if you've worked on it you can look back in your life and feel the satisfaction that you did something important. And the darker the problem, the more satisfaction you get from fighting it. Mitzi, why did you choose this battle to fight? Yeah, it exists in a scale that, unless you've studied it a little bit, you probably don't know.

17:31But human trafficking, the United Nations says that there are 40 million people who are trafficked right now. Unreal. Yeah, and if a person is trafficked, I mean, that's almost the same word as slavery. I mean, one person is owning another person and exploiting them. And more than 40 million people. And just to put that in context, the number 40 million, I'm going to guess for most of us, that's sort of a nebulous number. But one way to grasp it is think that, well, it's the population of every man, woman, and child in the state of California. Or another way to put it is I've read statistics that even during the Atlantic slave trade of several hundred years ago, the maximum number of people who were part of that was 15 million.

18:22And horrible as that 15 million is, just think that it's 40 million people who are enslaved today. and of those, by the way, 8 million are sex trafficked and of the 8 million who are sex trafficked, a million are kids and what trafficking means, say for a child a 12 year old child may be forced to have sex 10 or 12 times a night with complete strangers 365 days a year and her life expectancy is 7 years and those seven years well here's what's going to end it uh yeah probably earlier than seven years but on average she's not going to live longer than seven years she's going to die of suicide a drug overdose disease or organ harvesting can you get more evil than that no it's evil Yeah, and I have a friend who's a retired psychiatrist from New York University Medical Center.

19:30I think it's called the Langone Medical Center. And he told me he treats both the people who do this and the people who've been victimized by it. And he said, if you want to imagine what it's like for, say, that 12-year-old girl, He said, imagine the most depressed you've ever been in your whole life. You know, maybe somebody you really loved died. He said, it's like that every single day until they do die. You know, the worst depression you can imagine. He said, it differs from normal depression because he says when, or he told me, that when somebody comes into his office with depression, he knows that there's a beginning, middle, and end to the depression.

20:16in the case of a trafficked person, unless they're rescued, there's no end to it until death. So, you know, how can you get more horrible than that? It does not get more horrible. And, you know, one thing that I experienced personally in my life was, you know, as an officer in the U.S. Army for eight years, I did a 13-month... Thank you. Appreciate that, Mitzi. I did a 13-month tour of duty in Iraq. And let me tell you, I met some amazing and wonderful people over my time in Iraq for sure. But I also was exposed to some really sad and what I can only really say was likely a human trafficking situation over there.

20:59And there's only so much that we could do because I mean, you know, this is the US army, we were there on a mission. And, you know, we could only investigate so deep into certain things. but it was really obvious that these type of things were happening. And of course, this is just in a small, you know, city in Iraq, let alone think about the whole sphere of this world, the 40 million people that Mitzi's talking about here. I mean, this is the population of California puts it really into, into just relevancy. It's like, wow. So can we talk about some maybe bright sides of things, Mitzi? Like, is there being these rescues that we're talking about?

21:37What kind of momentum do we have in this area? Okay, well, first of all, I'm really grateful to you for switching course because I've talked about the darkest thing that there is, but the fact that people are working on it. The United Nations recognizes, at least last I looked, they recognize 2 ,000 anti-trafficking organizations. And I bet you that conservatively there are at least 40 ,000. And what I'm doing is I figure I'm never going to have the ability to rescue a child or anybody. I'm not going to be able to help restore somebody to a normal life. But what I can do is I can do fundraising and I can do awareness.

22:25And one of the great things is I write a blog. And by the way, I'd love any of our listeners to sign up for my blog. And if they've got a pencil and paper handy, I'll give you how to do it in a second. I'll see right now. Right now? Okay. Text WTF, and yes, I know how that sounds. Text WTF to 51555. And that will take you to my website, which is winthisfight.org. and uh when in in writing these blogs it means that so far i've interviewed almost a hundred heads of of other anti-trafficking organizations and what i do for them is i tell their stories including people who've been either rescued or or restored to something close to normalcy or i talk about organizations that are working to prevent this and it's to my mind it's a very uplifting thing but i also tell how people can volunteer to help in particular aspects of combating human trafficking so uh that that's one approach that i have but i'll tell you people who who read the blogs they tell me that yep that it's inspirational to to hear about good people who are doing good things it you know to my mind human trafficking tears away at your belief in humanity.

23:53But then when you see these people who are selflessly marshalling every skill and ability and talent and heart that they've got to fight this, I find it amazingly uplifting. But I also am involved with fundraising. And one of the ways for fundraising, well, COVID-19 interrupted something, but I expect to include it maybe next year or the year after. But I thought that, well, my story is that a couple of years ago, actually March 11th at 2 p.m. of 2019, I heard a lecture on human trafficking, and I saw the faces of little girls, you know, 12-year-old girls, who it turned out that they were just about to be rescued.

24:44but I felt when you see your face is frozen with fear and terror and despair, you couldn't unsee it. And so I in the audience listening to this lecture wanted to do something, but it occurred to me, and I bet a lot of people in our audience, our listeners might be in the same situation I was in, which is maybe you're philanthropic, maybe you want to help, but if you write a check to a new organization, it probably means cutting back on another organization. And in my case, I didn't want to cut back on the food bank, which I love, but I did want to do something about human trafficking, and then I had an idea.

25:30I own, because I inherited it, a desk that we think belonged to a de' Medici cardinal from 400 years ago. and I knew that if I put this up for auction, it could get a whole lot of attention because it's a historic thing and it could probably bring a pretty hefty price. Then I started thinking, you know, I bet there are a whole lot of people who also might have property that they'd be willing to put up at an anti-trafficking auction and they could designate which anti-trafficking organization it would go to and it would raise money and it would raise publicity at this or awareness at the same time and so I spent oh about a year traveling the world collecting insanely amazing donations that would bring fabulous amounts of money and I'll describe I'll tell you the best.

26:26I was in Taiwan and a man who was a jeweler invited me to come to his house for tea. And we're sitting in the second floor of his apartment in Taipei. And he tells me, you know, Mitzi, human trafficking is$150 billion a year enterprise. It's the second largest source of funds for criminals. He said, yeah, they're not going to like what you're doing. Aren't you worried that they may try to kill you? And I blurted out without even thinking about it. I said, I'm 78 years old. I believe in this cause. I don't care. Well, the man got up and he walked around behind his chair and there was a wall, which I hadn't really noticed before that had a curtain in front of it.

27:20He pulled the curtain and there was a safe. He manipulated the dial, the safe opened the door, reached in. And there in his palm was a ruby about the size of a golf ball. And he handed it to me. And I'm looking at this thing. And, you know, I have in my hand a five carat ruby. It's about the size of your little fingernail. Well, can you imagine a 70 carat ruby. Okay, there aren't very many in the world like this. And it has a history. It belonged to a Qing dynasty emperor. And we think from the way it was cut, because fashions and faceting stones change over the years, we think it's at least 300 years old.

28:08I don't know what it will go for, but I've heard people say$40 to$60 million. But that's not the only donation that's come in. One of the world's larger, perfect, I guess it's a near-perfect emerald, 12 plates from the year 1822 that belonged to a Russian czar. And these plates, there are 14 of them in the world, and two of them, I've actually seen them, are in a museum in Russia. There are two brothers who own the 12 plates and they say there's a Russian oligarch who would like to buy them. But instead, they're contributing to the anti-trafficking auction with the idea that the Russian oligarch can buy them at the auction.

28:55But we hope people are bidding against them. anyway uh there's the possible the the stories behind the different donations are so amazing that pbs public television in the united states has already filmed or videographed a a half hour documentary on them and so and the purpose of this you know partly it's raising money for anti-trafficking organizations and somebody who has an expensive thing that they would like to donate to the auction, they get to say where the money goes, but it has to be something having to do with combating human trafficking or else preventing it. And by the way, that happens to be a very, very, very large spectrum of activities because like if it's a literacy campaign, maybe in, I don't know, Namibia or something, or job training, or education in general, or health or sanitation.

29:59Anything that makes people less vulnerable makes trafficking less likely. So anybody who has an organization that they would like to donate an object to with the idea that we're going to convert the tangible property into cash that would then go to the anti-trafficking or prevention organization that they care about, let me know. I'd adore to hear from you. And if you're in the United States, you can get a tax deduction the year that you make the donation. So if you happen to need a tax donation this year, pledge it this year, pledge it irrevocably, and you get the tax deduction this year. And I'm going to bet that in a lot of countries, there's something similar, but I don't want to make guesses for other countries.

30:50Well, Mitzi, I really am glad that we ended on this high note with telling some really awesome stories and providing Fire Nation with some really great opportunities, how they can get involved if it makes sense for them, if this is something that their heart is connecting to right now. So let's bring this home, Mitzi. What is the one thing you really want our listeners to take away from our conversation today? One more time, give us that, you know, texting of WTF to 51555. Any other way that you want us to connect with you? And then we'll say goodbye. Thank you. Well, I'd love people to go to my website, winthisfight.org.

31:28And that, by the way, is where the initials WTF come from. And yes, I do know what WTF stands for, but I think it's just so appropriate for something so horrible. It's true. So text WTF to 555-1555. That will take you to my website or just go there directly. And I would love to hear from you. I'd love for you to sign up for my blog. And I think I can guarantee that you'll find the blog fascinating. It will tell you ways to volunteer. It will tell you ways to have an impact on this. And I just love to connect with you. and you can connect to it through winthisfight.org or 551-555. Mitzi, you're inspiring to me.