The Heart of Business
"The Heart of Business" podcast, hosted by Mo Fathelbab, is an authentic and insightful exploration of the human side of leadership and professional growth. Through candid conversations with accomplished business leaders, thought leaders, and peer group facilitators, Mo will delve deep into the personal journeys, challenges, and triumphs that have shaped their careers. Mo Fathelbab's skillful and empathetic approach creates a safe space for guests to share their truths and vulnerabilities, revealing the emotional and often unseen dimensions of success in the corporate world. Each episode offers listeners a chance to glean practical wisdom, heartfelt advice, and a profound understanding of the intricate interplay between leadership, authenticity, and personal growth.
The "Heart of Business" is the official podcast of International Facilitators Organization, LLC and hosted by IFO's founder and CEO, Mo Fathelbab. To learn more, please visit www.internationalfacilitatorsorganization.com.
The Heart of Business
From Closets to Community: Neil Balter on Building a Legacy of Innovation, Inspiration, and Inclusion
Neil Balter, the ingenious mind behind California Closets and a pioneering force of the Entrepreneurs Organization (EO), shares his extraordinary journey with us. Imagine a small, passionate group morphing into a global community with over 18,000 entrepreneurs—Neil recounts these early days with vivid anecdotes. Discover how connections formed in those nascent meetings fueled not just his career but a worldwide network of support and inspiration.
Our conversation takes an exciting turn as we explore Neil’s entrepreneurial saga, transforming a simple closet business into a franchise powerhouse. A chance encounter with a Wall Street Journal reporter became the catalyst for explosive growth, demonstrating the power of media and mentorship. Through strategic public relations and invaluable guidance from industry stalwarts like Bill Levine, Neil’s story is a testament to the wonders of storytelling in crafting a legacy.
Shifting gears, we delve into the heartfelt experience of raising a child with autism. Neil opens up about the challenges and triumphs of supporting his son, Jack, underlining the importance of early intervention and community engagement. His dedication to raising awareness and funds for autism is inspiring, proving that kindness and positivity are transformative forces. As we wrap up, our hearts are touched by the personal stories and insights shared, encouraging listeners to embrace uniqueness and find strength in community. Listen, learn, and let these narratives inspire your path to growth.
Please visit www.internationalfacilitatorsorganization.com to learn more about Mo Fathelbab and International Facilitators Organization (IFO), a leading provider of facilitators and related group facilitation services, providing training, certification, marketing services, education, and community for peer group facilitators at all stages of their career.
Welcome to the Heart of Business podcast sponsored by International Facilitators Organization. I'm your host, mo Fatalbab, and today's guest is Neil Balter, founder of California Closets Organizers, direct and many other companies, as well as one of the founding board members of the Entrepreneurs Organization and an all-around great guy In fact, one of the best bosses I've ever had. Neil, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:Oh, thanks for having me Excited to be here today, so.
Speaker 1:Neil, I think we met in 1990. Is that right? Does that sound right to you?
Speaker 2:That sounds about right to me. Maybe 89, 90. Sure yeah.
Speaker 1:So you were very instrumental in the beginning of EO and getting EO started. I would love to just hear your story of how it all came together in the early days Because, as you know, there are a couple of narratives out there and, as one of the founding board members who was there day one, I think your story matters.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know. My latest claim to fame at EOMO is I'm currently the longest dues paying member. Wow, Wow.
Speaker 2:That's amazing, I don't know if that's a claim or fame or you know I'm not all that bright, know I'm not all that bright, um, but anyway, you know, the beginnings of eo really started prior where it really developed, from ace, which is the association of collegiate entrepreneurs, and those were entrepreneurial clubs and all the colleges around the country started by bern harnish and doug mellinger and they were doing at that time their top 100 entrepreneurs under 30 years old, right.
Speaker 1:so were you one of those oh?
Speaker 2:yeah, you know, I was somewhere stuck between michael dell and steve jobs, right, whatever. But but anyway, you know when, when bern and those guys graduated, it morphed from ACE into.
Speaker 1:YEO Young Entrepreneurs Organization. And the criteria then was you had to be under 35? It was 30. See, I wasn't even there at the 30 point.
Speaker 2:So you know it developed into that. You know, really the beginning of it was Vern putting together 10 or 15 of us. We each put in $1,000 of seed money. You know there was probably 10 or 12 original founders and the first few years it was kind of a loose knit group that we got together once or twice a year and, you know, went to some exotic location and then talked about business and personal lives and whatnot and it was kind of in that format for the first couple of years. Right, it was this loose group of entrepreneurs that got together every two or three times a year.
Speaker 2:Then around I don't know, 90, 91, peter Thomas got involved. Peter was a longtime YPO guy, started Century 21 up in Canada, a very successful guy, and he acted as a mentor to us and at that point got us to develop the chapter program where we actually have chapters and so on and so forth, and he brought in some Canadians Peter's Canadian. He brought in some Canadians in it and all of a sudden, you know it was like a rocket ship that we started opening up chapters and you know, we went from, you know, three or 400 members to thousands of members. I don't know how many do they have now? I think 18,000 now 18,000. Isn't?
Speaker 1:that amazing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, unbelievable, yeah and so. But the early days of EO was like the early days of a company. It was just entrepreneurial, get the job done, nobody worried about anything, there wasn't a lot of politics, it was both engaging and fun at the same time. And you know, as organizations get bigger you know, from 200 members to 18,000, things are going to change. So you know, it went from in the early days to YEO Young Entrepreneurs Organization Then it went to EO because all of us got old and we wanted to stay in. So they changed it to EO. And then, as we all got older because you know, now we're all in our 60s and whatnot and then a friend of mine, now that we're in the 60s, thinks it should be changed to Oreos Old Rich Entrepreneurs Organization.
Speaker 1:I love it, I love it, I love it. Perhaps it should, but you know, the vibe did change when they changed the age. I remember going in one day to get a forum started and all of a sudden it felt like these people were way older than the people I was with just a year before.
Speaker 2:There was no question about it that it changed, and in a lot of ways it changed for both the good and negative. But again, we all wanted to stay in it and so something had to give and whatnot. For a while they tried WEO. Remember there was a WEO?
Speaker 1:World Entrepreneurs are India for the older members.
Speaker 2:But you know, it's kind of like YPO, where they had, you know, ypo and YPO Gold and then they merged them back together and you know, together is better.
Speaker 2:Together is better, but EO, yeo or EO, has been a very big part of my life over the last 30, 40 years. Most of my friends are EO members. We've traveled worldwide with tons of EO members. It's just been awesome, awesome event, awesome organization. And you know, like I said, it's grown to 20, you know 18,000 people, which is unbelievable, and you were there at the beginning. I think I was number three. Yeah, yeah probably Right.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about your first business California Closets. So tell us how you started the business Just you know how did you go from zero to the big company it became?
Speaker 2:How did you go from zero to the big company it became? Yeah, you know, I wish I could tell you, mo, that I had, you know, a bolt of lightning that struck one day and said closet is it? And this is what you're going to do for the next 40 years. It just didn't really work like that. I had just got out of high school. I went over to pick up a friend of mine to go out partying or whatever we were going to do.
Speaker 2:I was a carpenter, you know, I didn't want to go to college. So when I was in high school, my parents sat me down and said you know, where do you want to go to college? Your brother's in university. You got to go to university and I said no, I'm not going to university, I want to become a carpenter. And my mom looks at me and she goes. You're kidding me? She goes.
Speaker 2:First of all, there are no Jewish carpenters. There was one. He had better connections than you and look what happened to him. So true story.
Speaker 2:So, anyway, I was doing carpentry and I went over to pick up my friend Stephen, and his dad asked me to build some shelves in his closet. It was just that simple and we built some shelves in the closet came out. Great, the neighbor saw it, wanted theirs done. They recommended some friends to me and so Stephen's dad, marvin, thought it was a good idea and wanted me and Stephen, his son, to start a company to do this. Well, stephen thought it was a stupid idea and didn't want to have anything to do with it, right? Well, stephen thought it was a stupid idea and didn't want to have anything to do with it. Right, I kind of thought it was a good idea. So after, over the next couple of months, I kind of worked, marvin and I got Marvin, his dad, to do it with me without Stephen. So Marvin and I did it. He put up, like I don't know, $2,000 in a van that he had, that he had had, and we were off and going right, and this was back in 1978. Uh, there was no closet companies.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, we were the first.
Speaker 2:We're the first, which makes a big difference, right? So, um, we were off. You know we were doing flyers. Uh, I was 18 and you know there was days doing flyers. I was 18. And you know there was days this back in 1978, I was making four, five, 600 bucks in a day and you know, back in 78, that was a lot of money. I thought I had dived on to heaven. This was the greatest thing since sliced bread wrapped in plastic. So we went on a couple of years like that. And then Marvin you know he had done that to help me out, so he wanted me to buy him out. I bought him out for like 20 grand, paid him a thousand dollars a month for a couple of years or something like that, and and then I was off on my own and and things were good.
Speaker 2:Now, part of the story with California Closets is what I call the mentor story. I had a series of mentors that without them I never would have been successful. So Marvin was my first mentor, right, great guy, got me going, you know, gave me an office and he owned a big commercial collection agency, but you know, gave me a little office in the building to use and whatnot. So after Marvin was gone, I went back to community college and I took a nighttime marketing class, advertising, and that particular class was taught by a professor. His name was Dave Siegel and Dave had invented the convertible sofa, owned a company called living on the riviera convertible sofa on the east coast castro convertibles, but it was huge and he had sold the company and then started teaching to university to keep himself busy, busy anyway, barbin or d Dave Siegel took me under his wing, became my next mentor. He was fantastic, you know, his company was. You know, turned a couch into a bed and an extra room into a bedroom safe space. We were kind of safe space right.
Speaker 2:We were safe in space by utilizing the full closet with the shelving, the beautiful shelf uh, you know, took me under his wing, said listen, you know, I think this is great I'll help you out, but there's some ground rules.
Speaker 2:Number one clean your act up, go cut your hair the surfer oh yeah, you know, I had a hair halfway my down, my I was 21 or whatever. It was back Anyway. So I cleaned my act up and David, he was the first one who got us to advertise right Now in his day he was one of the biggest advertisers at the LA Times, you know, did double trucks and just a huge, huge advertiser. So he took me down to the Times one day and instead of you know some local little rep out in the valley and whatnot, we went to downtown, met the VP of sales and marketing, ate in the private lunchroom. You know it was like so above where I would have started. But those guys really helped me out. They had their art department do some ads. They got me some editorials, they got me great placement and all of a sudden business took off. Up until that point I had never run an ad in a newspaper, never had done anything.
Speaker 2:And now all of a sudden we were going right, we were going yeah, oh, we were going by this point I probably had, yeah, I don't know, six, seven, eight employees, installation sales and whatnot, but we were going and then-.
Speaker 1:And how did you go from that stage to deciding to franchise? Well, there you go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Gabe Siegel, that guy was the guy who gave me the idea to franchise, because they had franchises, you know these convertible silver stores. So he was the one who said, hey, you should franchise this thing. Blah, blah, blah, Because he always thought it was a good idea. Now, let's not forget that his kids had bought the first four franchises in the LA area. That's how much of a good idea he thought it was. So I had hired this attorney and had made a deal with him. I couldn't really afford to pay him, but I said, hey, listen, I'll stay with you for at least five years. I'll give you a little money up front and then you'll have plenty of time to recoup your investment. So we were going from there. We were advertising for franchises over the next couple of years. We probably had, I don't know, 10 or 11 franchises when the next big thing happened.
Speaker 2:And this would have been March of 84, right? So this was six years after I had been in business and a couple, two, three years after I started franchising. So I was flying home from Sacramento after I started franchising. So I was flying home from Sacramento, California, and for once I got sat next to this really good looking woman. So you know, I'm sitting next to her and I'm giving her the whole pitch and whatnot, and as we're starting to land, I said hey, listen, maybe we can go out for dinner, Right, she goes. No, I don't think so, but I'm a reporter for a newspaper and I'd love to do a story on your company after telling me all about it. So she hands me her business card and she worked for this little paper called the Wall Street Journal.
Speaker 1:Oh.
Speaker 2:OK, so about a month later, on the front page of the second section, you know, one day was real estate, one day was electronic talk, one day was small business Right. So they did this big article on the company and that was a game changer, game changer, game changer. So we had probably been getting, you know, four to 10 inquiries a month for new franchises, right? Yeah, you know advertising and Entrepreneur Magazine and Inc Magazine and those kind of deals. The story came out in the Wall Street Journal. We probably got 200 calls in the next week. It was unbelievable, amazing.
Speaker 2:It propelled us to a whole new level because all of a sudden, we had credibility. You know, prior to the Wall Street Journal, you've got this 21 year old kid selling closets. I mean, people would look at you with a crooked eye, like, really you think you can make money selling closets. But then, when the Wall Street Journal came out, changed everything. Because now, all of a sudden, I had the Wall Street Journal endorsing us, saying this was a great idea, blah, blah, blah, and it gave us instant credibility with consumers, franchises, banks, anybody, right, all of a sudden people started taking us seriously, seriously, and it, you know, it almost put us out of business because we couldn't. We weren't set up to handle that influx of new franchises and whatnot.
Speaker 2:It was just absolutely incredible. But on the other side of that, it taught me a valuable lesson, one of the most valuable lessons period. And what was that? Well, advertising is cursed and editorial is blessed. So you could put the same words in an ad in Entrepreneur Magazine and people take it with a grain of salt, but if they read it in an article on the Wall Street Journal, they believe it.
Speaker 2:So what did that do? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what did that do? That made us change our whole marketing to new franchises. So we had been advertising and whatnot. We stopped advertising. We took all the money, hired a PR company and then went after PR and over the next five to 10 years I had done well over 300 talk shows, been on Oprah four times anywhere from Forbes magazine, entrepreneur, any of the magazines done big stories on the company, and so we built the company through positive PR. Amazing, that was the driver. That was the driver because when that story came out, like I said, we had eight or ten locations. Over the next three or four years we went up to 200 locations. And it was all from focusing on attracting new customers through public relations and editorial rather than advertising.
Speaker 1:Brilliant, and how many years after that did you sell the business?
Speaker 2:Five, six years to Williams-Sonoma. I think, yeah, about six years after that. Yeah, and then, after Dave, I had another mentor, bill Levine, and Bill had started pip printing. If you go back many years ago before you know, in the original instant print you know they were. They had like twelve, thirteen hundred locations, right, and and he became my next mentor, joined the board and helped me out. I'm telling you, the whole part of my success was attracting mentors to help me out over the years, attracting mentors to help me out over the years. And if I didn't have those four or five guys that I went to every couple of weeks or every month, I don't think we would have been as successful. There was no question about it. Listen, I didn't go to university, I didn't have an MBA.
Speaker 1:I was building this company by the seat of my pants just going, going, going and built it in one of the most successful franchises and built it in one of the most successful franchises.
Speaker 2:It was good, I mean, you know, the reality is the company has become a brand. Right, it's a brand new company. It is still a brand Absolutely, because I can't tell you. You know, I run into people and they'll say, what do you do? And I say, oh, I used to be in the closet business. And they go, oh, like California Closets? Oh yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:Exactly, Exactly. So you've. You've been in and out of the closet business a few times. Uh, not just that business, but a couple of others. After that is the first one, the most nostalgic for you, the most meaningful for you, or do you like not look back and the most recent one is more meaningful for you, like not?
Speaker 2:look back and the most recent one is more meaningful for you. Well, I think a little bit of both Mo Listen, the California Closets because it was a brand. There's always something there, right, and you know it's been. You know 20 years since I've ran that company, but you can't change history. I was still the founder and I'm still the guy who built that company. And because it's a brand, unlike the other companies that I started, there's always that warm and cozy feeling that comes with people knowing the brand.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, Absolutely. But the other closet companies and closet products that I did were very successful. I mean almost as successful as California closets, but just in a different format.
Speaker 1:And along the way you had a French fry vending machine business.
Speaker 2:Yes, between California closets and my next closet company, I had got into a vending machine that made French fries. It was a experience yeah, can't say it was particularly a good one. You know, everything was going good until we almost burnt down the library at the University of British Columbia and then things started coming on the loose. Oh no, but the good thing with the French fry company is the guy behind it was Edgar Kaiser. You know Kaiser Aluminum, kaiser, medical, that Kaiser. And having worked with him, I got introduced to the chairman of Pepsi and Goldman Sachs and you know these big time people because that's the sandbox that Edgar played in. And one thing it got me to learn is that these people are not any smarter than us. They put their pants on the same way. They're just regular people. They might have these big jobs, but it gave me a lot of confidence in myself, having dealt with people, because I you know I went in putting them on a pedestal, came out thinking they were almost equals you know it's interesting.
Speaker 1:You say that, uh, for a couple of reasons. The first is one I've noticed the same thing and, and I'm sure I've shared with you before, that there are many people that I put on a pedestal at some point or another only to find out, eh like, really, you know there's more to the story. None of us are just, like you know, perfect, so that was interesting to me. But the other thing to me about that is, when you worked with him, my recollection is it wasn't necessarily, you know, easy, or was it easy? I mean, I know that for me.
Speaker 2:No, it wasn't easy. You know, unfortunately, edgar has passed away, but he was, you know, not a stable guy. I mean he, you know. I mean you know he owned the Denver Broncos at one point. I mean, you know, he was big time. But I have to tell you, after the first six months I just didn't respect him anymore. Right, you know what I'm saying? He just was not, he was just holding himself, right, I mean?
Speaker 1:whatever. That's. The other thing I loved about you, neil, always is you treated everybody like gold. It did not matter whether they were your waiter or whether your next you know million dollar deal. You've always treated everybody the same. And I mentioned at the beginning of this recording that you were my favorite boss, and you know, just to paint the picture here, as executive director of EO, I had a chairman of the board. Every year that changed and that's essentially the person to whom I reported most closely, other than the board itself, and you were my favorite hands down, and part of the reason is you gave me rope and you gave me confidence and you gave me space, and you know the criteria for EO is a million dollars. It is still a million dollars, and what I noticed is the smaller the business that this chairman of the board owned and had started, the more they tended to be a micromanager and the bigger the business, I think, the more they had to let go of that.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, I've always been a believer. You know, I had the sign on my desk and I'm a dr seuss believer, and what I mean by that is my favorite quote is tell me what you're going to do, do what you tell me. Everything else is fine, as long as you tell me what you're going to do and you do what you tell me. Go for it, leave me alone. Yes, at the end of it and that I always believe in people is just tell the truth. Tell me what you're gonna do, do what you tell me. We're gonna get along just fine, that's simple.
Speaker 1:I love it doesn't need to be overly complicated yeah, no, it's, it's uh, you've, you've been, uh, you've been one of my mentors I'll tell you that and it's just been a pleasure, not only to have that in terms of how much I've learned from you, you know, but also I treasure the friendship we've developed through that. You've just been incredible.
Speaker 2:After the French fry company, I actually started another closet deal with another EO guy, kevin Harrington. Right, and tell people who Kevin Harrington is. Well, kevin is the king of infomercials, right, I mean, he's just and he was one of the original founders of EO, been a longtime friend and very super successful Kevin. Anyway, I was living down in Barbados and Kevin came to and we were on the beach at you know, one in the morning, had a few too many drinks and we conjured up this infomercial for this 30 minute closet in the box Right, that anybody could do. So we him and I did it. We did a 30 minute infomercial, eventually got it into Home Depot and Lowe's and all that stuff and it was very successful and Kevin was fantastic about it and whatnot.
Speaker 2:And that 30-minute closet makeover kind of led me into Organizers Direct, which was very similar to California Closets, except it wasn't franchise, it was dealerships. So one of the problems that with dealerships and franchises you know franchise is very legally. There's a lot of legal work, it's very burdensome and whatnot. Independent dealers are way easier. You don't have all the regulatory burdens and the FTC and all that stuff. But the big difference is they can't trade under a common name where all of them traded under California closets. The organizers, correct. You know we had 300 dealers, but they were. You know they have a different name in every city. Wow.
Speaker 2:Wow, wow, I didn't know that You're not building that. Now you can say hey, john's Closet's an authorized dealer of organizer direct products no different from DuPont Carpet. You see, john's Carpet authorized dealer of DuPont, right, they're dealers, so you can use an H in there. But you can't call it that. But Organized Direct. Super successful, almost as successful as California Closets. Different but very good.
Speaker 1:So did that give you a sense of a comeback after the French fry business didn't go as well as you'd like? Sure it did.
Speaker 2:And it gave me that self-confidence again. But the French fry business didn't go as well as you sure it did. And and it gave me that self-confidence again. But the french fry business wasn't my fault, it was edgar's nightmare, but anyway, um, but doing organizers direct, you know you go back to what you know right and and you know you know well, I'm sitting here, I'm 64. I'm retired. But if I wanted to, I could start another closet company tomorrow and within 18 months have 100, 150 locations, because at one point it becomes wash, rinse, repeat, right.
Speaker 1:You've done it enough.
Speaker 2:Yes, not a lot of mystery on how to do it at this point. It's just a matter of doing the work Right. I know, I know what needs to get done to make it successful and attract dealers and and so on, but you got to. You know, you got to do the work. There's no shortcut.
Speaker 1:There's no shortcut. So, neil, I want to shift gears a little bit and, with all your incredible achievement and success and everything I've said about just really looking up to you for nearly three decades now, there have been some challenges along the way. Can you talk about a couple of those and how you got through them?
Speaker 2:mo, everybody has challenges, as I like to say. Nobody gets a free pass in this world. Everybody's got a, an ant with alzheimer's and something. It just everybody's dealing with something. And you know, over the years, yeah, we've dealt with stuff. You know we, our son is autistic, right, so we've dealt with that. You know we, our son is autistic, right, so we've dealt with that. But we pretty well embraced the autism community from early on. You know we've raised I don't know probably over $10 million in money for the autism community.
Speaker 1:And Neil, I gotta, just, I gotta just give you a shout out because your marketing skills are just incredible. I got to just give you a shout out because your marketing skills are just incredible. So, for those people out there that are not part of your network, every year I get an email that says time to pay the Balter tax Translation donation to Autism Speaks Exactly. And how old is Jack now? He's 22? 21. 21. And so for 21 years, I've been incredibly grateful to have the opportunity to help support this cause, because it is an important cause. And the part that brings me to tears, as you know, is when my cousin's son was born and we suspected he might be on the spectrum. And you, my friend, took two hours and a PowerPoint and sat with him and his wife and went through all this stuff with him, and I have to tell you you know that kid wasn't speaking and he now talks.
Speaker 2:So you know, I can't thank you enough.
Speaker 2:One of the things that I've done for years Mo is, and now that I've moved to mexico, not as much, but I've dealt with two to three parents a month that are newly diagnosed parents and it's just heartbreaking because, you know, it's not like the kid broke an arm in six weeks he's fine. This is a forever deal and you know they're raw, they're upset, and so one of the things that I've done is, like I said, I had a program for newly diagnosed families to help them through that first 90 days because it's so overwhelming to them. You know it's just overwhelming to them and I enjoy it. I mean it's emotional, it's hard you never get through one of these meetings without someone crying but but I see how it improves the lives of the kids and the parents to help them through this time. And so my wife and I we've always been willing to do it and we've done it quite a bit. I mean, like I said, I had a whole program that I put together for it and it's important.
Speaker 2:You know, when we got Jack got diagnosed when he was four or five, I think five, but whatever. At that point it was one in 156 kids that were getting diagnosed with autism. Today it's down to one in 38. One in 38 kids are getting diagnosed with autism and it's a lifelong deal. The problem with autism it's in that same deal as Alzheimer's. As any of the neurological diseases they're the hardest ones for them to get their hands around.
Speaker 1:You know epilepsy, any of the neurological things, it's just tough, but you have literally just I mean I would say it's miraculous how you've changed Jack's life through all the work you've done and all the treatments right and so how? Is Jack. Today he's driving, he lives on his own.
Speaker 2:Well, he's got his own condo now, but he's at ASU, he's doing good. I mean, he'll always have autism because autism never goes away but he's functioning, he lives on his own right. He, you know, at the end of the day he's functioning. And there's a big spectrum with autism. You know, 30% of those kids never taught ever right. And so you've got this big spectrum from low to high functioning. Jack's pretty high functioning, but Mo, there was probably literally 10 years that he was doing 40 to 60 hours a week of therapies of some sort Speech, OT, PT, ABA, music, whatever. And because the one thing that everybody agrees on with autism is that one of the most important things is early intervention with autism, is that one of the most important things is early intervention. You got to get early because if you get a kid at four, you can only be four years behind. Yeah, right, and massive intervention because you've got until about the time they're 12 or 13 is where you get the biggest benefits of all that intervention.
Speaker 2:So it's tough, I mean, and it you accept it for what it is, you deal with it. You know, there's times that I watch the interaction between my friends and their sons that are that same age. It hurts a little bit that I don't get that same stuff. You know he, you know he. He's never going to play sports, he's never going to golf, he's never going to be able to do any of those kind of things with me. But he does other things right, and so you look for the positives and you just put the negatives in a box and shove it off to the side.
Speaker 1:So you know, first of all, thank you for sharing all that, but what you just said really sums up how I would quote Neil Balter, and I'm going to use a quote that I've heard from you a million times, and it is you get much more with sugar than you do with vinegar. Can you share with us a story about? You know, a meaningful story for you in the last couple of minutes, about a situation where you got more with sugar than vinegar.
Speaker 2:Well, mo, I live my life on that and what I said before I live my life on. I treat everybody the same right and in a positive way right, you do.
Speaker 2:You know I'm a positive guy. I you know I get rid of the negative. I always put a positive toot on it. I put the best spin on it that I can because, again, there's no upside on focusing on the negative. You've got to deal with the negative. You deal with it, you move on. But to focus on it what good comes from it, nothing Right.
Speaker 2:When I run into someone who's upset what I do, I kill them with kindness. I lower my voice, I talk softer. You kill them with kindness because eventually they're going to calm down right. So you, just, you know the the world. You know, as I mentioned before mo, the one of the reasons we live in me, mexico, six months of the year is because you find in the country right now there's this underlying anger out there. That's just horrible, right, and people are on edge and whatnot. And people down in Mexico they're friendly, they're nice, they just want to have a good time. They don't talk about politics, it's just. You know, it's what I like. I don't I'll deal with negative, but I want to not be around it as much as possible. I don't, I just don't like it. Okay, people that focus on the negative all the time.
Speaker 1:I agree, I agree, and and you know that is something else that I absolutely have seen and learned from you a thousand times over, and that is, you're always focused on the positive, and there's no question. I remember I had some bad news for you in my very early three months at EO and I was just petrified to even call you and say, neil, here's what happened. And sure, true to the point, you're like Mo, no big deal, we're getting through it Onwards. What's the next item on your agenda? It was beautiful, moving on, let's get through it. My friend, it has been a pleasure speaking with you and having you on this show, a lot of great lessons and a great story that I know people will absolutely enjoy, and so thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Speaker 2:Happy to help anytime Will. You can follow the.
Speaker 1:Heart of Business podcast, wherever you get your podcasts. Also, podcast reviews have a real impact on the podcast visibility, so please leave a review to help others find the show. Finally, you can find all our episodes on our website, internationalfacilitatorsorganizationcom. Thanks for listening. Have a great day.
