(((My Fellow Americans))) #88: Chris Rufer

DISCLOSURE

FULL TRANSCRIPT TEXT

01:40
i’ll be
01:41
buried in my grave
01:46
before i become a slave yes
01:53
that is
01:54
[Music]
02:08
[Music]
02:15
but it seems like since that day
02:22
we have sorely changed
02:31
[Music]
02:41
[Music]
02:48
that is
02:49
[Music]
03:02
[Music]
03:10
but it seems like since
03:14
[Music]
03:17
we have sorely changed
03:33
[Music]
03:37
[Applause]
03:37
[Music]
03:42
from beautiful myrtle beach south
03:45
carolina
03:46
you’re watching my fellow americans
03:50
with your host spike cullen
03:53
yes yes it’s me thank you
03:58
thank you so much keep clapping
04:01
thank you keep clapping i’m talking for
04:03
you
04:04
how would we know how happy you are to
04:07
watch this
04:08
special episode of my fellow americans
04:10
if you didn’t keep clapping
04:12
welcome to my fellow americans i am
04:15
literally
04:16
spike cohen i know what you’re thinking
04:17
spike you’re a little bit better dressed
04:18
than you usually are
04:20
for an episode of my fellow americans
04:21
well of course i am this is a
04:23
businessman’s episode
04:24
i am a businessman and so i’m wearing my
04:27
business attire
04:28
thank you so much for joining us be sure
04:30
to share this right now this is a muddy
04:32
waters media production you can check us
04:33
out on facebook youtube instagram anchor
04:36
twitter periscope itunes google play
04:39
float
04:39
twitch all of your podcasting platforms
04:42
you can check us out anywhere anywhere
04:44
that you can watch or listen to things
04:45
we are probably there including wherever
04:47
you’re watching this from
04:49
or listening to right now be sure to
04:51
share this right now
04:52
the last thing that i want the last
04:54
thing anyone wants
04:55
is for you and your closest loved ones
04:57
to be missing out
04:58
on a libertarian podcast that’s roughly
05:01
an hour long
05:02
i would hate that for you give the gift
05:03
of spike cohen’s today
05:05
kids love it uh this episode of course
05:08
is brought to you by personal injury
05:10
attorney chris reynolds
05:11
attorney at law uh if you live in the
05:14
tampa bay area of florida
05:15
and find yourself to be injured
05:17
personally uh then chris reynolds can
05:19
help you with that chrisreynoldslaw.com
05:21
or i i don’t have his phone number
05:23
written down i keep forgetting that
05:25
uh the intro and outro music to this and
05:26
every episode of my fellow americans
05:28
comes from the amazing and talented mr
05:31
joe davey that’s j-o-d-a-v-i
05:34
check him out on facebook go to his
05:37
soundcloud
05:38
uh go to his band camp go to
05:41
joedoveymusic.bandcamp.com
05:42
buy everything he’s ever made it’s like
05:45
25
05:46
you can buy his entire discography it is
05:48
amazing
05:49
amazing amazing music be sure to do that
05:51
today i’d like to thank
05:53
you who’s drawing i’d like to thank
05:54
kroger for this delicious
05:56
purified drinking water that i’m
05:57
drinking on this episode
05:59
of my fellow americans boulevard it just
06:01
popped
06:02
is water supposed to pop this pop why
06:05
did the water pop
06:06
bulovanaka
06:09
shout out to tehran turks mom and him as
06:11
always folks my guest tonight is someone
06:13
i’ve been looking forward to talking to
06:15
for weeks now we’ve been we’ve we we got
06:18
them scheduled uh almost a month ago now
06:20
and i have been really really excited to
06:22
have him on
06:23
uh as a businessman uh
06:26
and and i feel weird calling myself a
06:28
businessman compared to him
06:30
because i’m a businessman as he’s a
06:33
businessman
06:34
in the same way that like a matchbox car
06:37
and uh if you put a matchbox car next to
06:39
like a chevy tahoe
06:40
technically those are both vehicles
06:44
anyway so as a businessman i i find him
06:47
to be
06:47
incredibly inspirational and uh and i’m
06:49
very interested to talk with him
06:51
uh he is a libertarian and he’s a
06:53
businessman and he has applied
06:55
his libertarian ideas to the business
06:58
model that he has created
06:59
which in my mind is revolutionary and uh
07:02
i can’t say anymore i just
07:03
let’s go ahead and introduce him ladies
07:05
and gentlemen my fellow americans
07:07
please welcome to the show mr chris
07:10
roofer chris
07:11
thanks so much for joining us tonight
07:14
hello thank you very much look forward
07:16
to it yeah thank you so much and and i
07:18
you know like i said as a businessman
07:20
uh i and as a business owner i find you
07:23
to be an absolute inspiration and i’ve
07:25
been looking forward to this gen
07:26
this discussion for weeks so thanks so
07:29
much for coming on
07:30
you’re welcome and folks be sure to
07:33
chime in with your questions and
07:35
thoughts
07:35
and chris and i will tell you if you are
07:37
right or
07:39
wrong now chris uh as a libertarian uh
07:42
whenever i have a libertarian on the
07:43
show
07:44
i always ask uh ask my new libertarian
07:46
guest
07:47
what got you into libertarianism was it
07:49
like an aha moment
07:50
or sort of a gradual evolution of time
07:52
all libertarians have their genesis
07:55
story if you will
07:56
tell us the chris roofer story i don’t
07:59
think i have a genesis story i think it
08:01
was born this way
08:02
so i went to uh grew up in a small town
08:04
merced in
08:05
cal town in central california and went
08:08
to uh i went to ucla as a freshman
08:11
but ucla at the time was known as like a
08:13
chicago
08:14
west thomas sol a well-known libertarian
08:17
was my
08:18
labor professor and other professors at
08:20
ucla’s economics department
08:22
were a similar summer nature
08:25
so i may have absorbed things from a uh
08:29
osmosis perspective but i also have
08:32
i would have to guess uh just a basic
08:34
character and an inclination personally
08:37
to
08:38
to be receptive to these concepts so i
08:41
didn’t realize
08:42
uh i think getting out of school i was
08:44
starting to see a libertarian and
08:46
the name and the term and started
08:48
falling and i said well that’s me
08:51
so i didn’t have to transition from
08:53
anything else i think i was born into it
08:55
i think i
08:56
i got it for osmosis through this school
08:58
i went to and i
09:00
uh uh i remember arguing even before
09:03
economics classes uh in a similar manner
09:06
as far as
09:07
you know not no coercion respecting
09:10
other people
09:11
and respecting their their bodies and
09:13
their property
09:14
so i don’t think i transitioned i just
09:16
smoothed into it
09:18
you smoothed into the definition but you
09:20
were already a libertarian basically
09:22
that’s what appears to be the case
09:24
because there was no that’s it i read on
09:26
ran or i read this book or read that
09:27
book and all of a sudden i got it
09:30
yeah so i’m kind of the stereotypical
09:32
millennial libertarian who
09:34
started out as a conservative and then
09:36
you know ron paul
09:37
brought me into libertarianism you are
09:40
one of the you know the the original you
09:42
came
09:42
out of you know you were born uh as
09:45
a libertarian and just it took you time
09:48
to find the term
09:49
but you are already living according to
09:50
the idea of leaving others alone
09:52
you know and and personal autonomy and
09:54
things like that that’s really cool so
09:56
i want to we have to talk about this
09:58
this business model which is
10:00
it’s basically libertarianism applied to
10:01
business first of all a little bit of
10:04
a background on on your company uh
10:06
morningstar uh
10:08
company processes 25 this might be
10:11
it might be more now this this is a few
10:13
years old from what i got
10:14
uh but about 25 of the california
10:18
uh processing tomato production you
10:20
supply roughly half give or take
10:22
of the of the entire u.s uh tomato paste
10:26
and diced tomatoes market so if you are
10:29
if you eat at home today uh watching
10:31
this at home if you have eaten tomatoes
10:34
uh ever more than likely uh
10:37
at least half of the time or roughly
10:40
half the time give or take take
10:41
you have eaten a tomato that came from
10:43
chris’s company that that’s how
10:44
widespread of a company this is
10:46
um so chris you actually started this
10:48
company
10:49
it correct me if i’m wrong as this
10:51
started as you being a truck driver
10:53
delivering tomatoes is that correct
10:56
yeah my father was was basically a truck
10:58
driver he worked for my
10:59
my grandfather for quite some time and
11:01
and ended up
11:02
uh buying your own his own truck and
11:05
being
11:05
what’s called a sub-hauler so you when
11:08
you you own and operate your
11:09
drive your own truck and then the uh so
11:12
i go to work with him quite a bit even
11:13
when
11:14
i was very young but so i remember
11:17
first year in at ucla the summer or the
11:20
next summer
11:21
i was with him and as one of his buddies
11:24
truckers are stopped they talk a lot
11:27
and one guy talked about hauling
11:28
tomatoes from merced
11:30
which caught my mind that’s where i was
11:32
from to orange county where my parents
11:34
lived at the time when i went to ucla
11:36
they haven’t moved down they’re just
11:37
coincidence
11:39
and so i got the idea of doing that and
11:41
i uh researched uh researched it out i
11:43
think i was a
11:44
i was a junior right maybe you’ve seen i
11:46
just turned 21 so i drove out
11:48
on my first job i always just turned 21
11:51
which for insurance reasons and renting
11:52
a truck
11:54
i did so it was a quote summer job but
11:56
it was such that i
11:57
i became a tomato some hauler all in
12:00
holland tomatoes this is and so how did
12:04
i just i’m sure there was a few steps
12:06
involved how do you go from
12:08
i’m hauling tomatoes for some for the
12:11
for the cup basically the family
12:12
two i am now in charge of a company with
12:16
a global reach
12:17
that supplies i don’t know is it
12:19
trillions of tomat billions of
12:21
i don’t know how many i don’t know how
12:22
many tomatoes it would be to supply this
12:25
kind of market but
12:26
many many how what what led to that
12:30
well and i really not too favor on
12:34
people today they’re going to these
12:36
what do they call them internships and
12:38
you start out i want to be in finance so
12:40
when you’re a sophomore or junior in
12:42
college you’re going to these
12:43
internships how about getting out in the
12:45
world and seeing how the world works
12:47
so i i drove a truck yes but driving a
12:49
truck if you’re if you’re watching
12:50
things
12:51
you see you drive out to the field
12:54
growers fields
12:55
and you see how they’re harvesting
12:56
tomatoes you see how it operates
12:58
right you follow the system through you
13:00
go to the
13:01
factory where they’re you know unloading
13:04
the tomatoes and processing tomatoes as
13:05
well as other fruits
13:07
sometimes and you see how they do that
13:10
and how it all works and i noticed that
13:12
at the end
13:13
of the harvesting machines that they’re
13:15
throwing away why are they
13:17
20 times a 15 to 20 sorters on a one
13:19
tomato harvesting machine
13:21
that picks up the tomatoes off the row
13:23
and it cuts them and puts up an elevator
13:26
shakes them off and drops them down and
13:27
they have people on either side
13:29
sorting tomatoes what are they basically
13:31
sorting for you talk to the growers and
13:33
it’s just saying and curious curiosity i
13:35
think is the key thing
13:36
well there there are there they’re
13:38
taking out the green tomatoes
13:40
because the ones that aren’t wrapped yet
13:42
and at the time they’re probably
13:43
ten percent of the of what you’d pick up
13:45
out of the field
13:46
so then in the factory i noticed that
13:48
the greens floated
13:50
and you take a green tomato and put it
13:52
in water and it floats
13:54
so some of the red ones will float too
13:55
but i said well why don’t why don’t you
13:58
and we harvested just during the day so
14:00
we truck just during the day
14:02
so i thought i was locating in the
14:03
central valley i got eight nine loads a
14:05
week
14:05
our trucks now get 50 or 70 loads a week
14:08
so why don’t they do 24 hours a day well
14:10
there’s not lights and they’ve got all
14:11
those workers out there the coordination
14:12
we wanted to 24 hours a day
14:14
skip this grading session i went to
14:15
right go to the factory unload them and
14:17
sort out the greens in the water well i
14:20
have all these 18 people starting these
14:22
tomatoes out on the machine
14:23
when you can do it so you just you just
14:25
curiosity and putting things together
14:28
so i drove a truck in the summers for
14:31
five years i had
14:32
three degrees so it took me a little
14:34
longer
14:35
but it got me through school and then i
14:37
was getting out of school
14:39
and i just moved up to davis to research
14:41
my ideas i think i was the only mba from
14:43
ucla that didn’t go interview for a job
14:45
so i just moved to davis and researched
14:47
my ideas and
14:48
one thing led to another and uh that’s
14:51
how it started
14:52
that’s how i got into the business
14:55
so you got in and you’re basically just
14:58
you’re
14:58
you’re you’re basically trucking but as
15:02
you’re trucking you’re seeing
15:04
wait a second this isn’t working right
15:05
you mentioned one example of of the of
15:07
the the
15:08
tomatoes floating and then eventually
15:10
over time you were able to grow into
15:12
being the owner of a
15:13
that’s fanta that’s this is like i said
15:16
as someone who is very business inclined
15:18
this is the kind of stuff that i want to
15:19
hear half of having you on the show
15:22
was to educate uh the uh my audience on
15:26
you know how libertarian ideals can be
15:27
applied to actual real-life situations
15:30
the other half is just to listen to you
15:31
talk about this stuff because i’m
15:33
absolutely fascinated and inspired by it
15:35
but uh so morningstar is very
15:38
interesting
15:39
in that unlike for those who don’t know
15:41
unlike most large companies
15:44
as much as half of the workforce
15:46
especially the bigger it gets
15:48
the bigger a percentage of the company
15:50
ends up just being middle and upper
15:52
management
15:52
as the company gets bigger and there’s
15:54
more and more separation from department
15:56
to department and from worker to worker
15:58
the model has always been sort of this
16:00
lack of a better word pyramid type model
16:02
where there’s various levels of
16:03
management that work their way up
16:05
between the boss
16:06
and and and the various or the the board
16:09
or whatever and the various employees
16:10
but your company’s doing things quite
16:13
differently than that model isn’t it
16:15
yes so it’s called the
16:19
so you you call it a uh uh uh solutions
16:23
correct me a solutions focus
16:25
self-managed
16:26
model what what does that look like
16:28
compared to the the the normal business
16:30
model
16:31
or the more our technical term is
16:33
mission focused
16:35
focus okay how how was that so i can
16:38
describe
16:39
i can describe it different ways from
16:41
ups and downs how it started how it
16:42
evolved
16:43
uh what it really is uh and again go
16:46
through probably five or six
16:47
statements that would explain it pretty
16:49
well you want to go through those or how
16:50
would you want to proceed
16:52
yeah so let’s so let’s start with that
16:53
how did you even come about the idea i
16:55
mean
16:55
you sort of started with you know a
16:57
solution now something worse but how how
16:59
did you go from saying
17:00
this other way of working isn’t working
17:02
let’s do it this way
17:05
that again i think naturally evolved we
17:07
started i started after school
17:09
i worked for another person who was in
17:10
the tomato business for about a year and
17:11
a half it was also beginning to start to
17:13
build the uh
17:14
the tracking operations so we we today
17:17
in the summer
17:18
are haunting tomatoes right around 300
17:19
tractors and i don’t know seven or eight
17:21
hundred
17:22
sets of tomato trailers hauling tomatoes
17:24
uh we’re like the largest agricultural
17:26
hauling company in
17:27
california in the summer time at least
17:31
but we started that in and of course i
17:33
drove in the summertime
17:34
while going to school so we started the
17:36
trucking company
17:38
uh i did and i worked with another
17:39
person who basically was
17:41
a partner not legally but a partner we
17:44
worked
17:45
together and he ran some of the
17:48
operations i ran the business part he
17:50
ran to the operations but
17:51
we hired drivers and basically they were
17:54
uc davis
17:55
uh students so most of them were college
17:57
kids also
17:58
but you start with a trucking outfit you
18:00
can’t supervise
18:02
truck drivers you know unless you had
18:04
another a supervisor
18:06
this is part of the story about
18:07
self-management and you can use a
18:08
trucking sample i usually use a
18:10
restaurant example but
18:11
can you imagine a trucking company you
18:12
had a supervisor
18:15
in the truck there’s two two seats in
18:16
the big truck okay and you had a driver
18:19
so the concept of management why
18:22
management
18:23
so if you really want to run our
18:24
operation really well you should have
18:27
the driver who’s a concept basically as
18:29
well the truck driver the worker
18:32
really doesn’t know that much they’re
18:33
they’re sometimes dishonest and they
18:35
can’t coordinate themselves and
18:37
they’re not that skillful but so you
18:38
hire a manager why do you hire a manager
18:41
to supervise this person the assumption
18:43
would be that the manager is
18:45
totally honest totally confident you
18:48
know knows how to organize their work
18:49
with other people
18:50
right i mean they’re they know there’s
18:51
they got a high skill level so that’s
18:53
why you have a manager
18:54
so now imagine in a truck that you have
18:58
you’re looking at a trucking company you
18:59
want to buy their state uh spike and
19:02
you had this trucking company that had a
19:04
worker quote
19:06
less than competent person there driving
19:07
the truck and you had a supervisor
19:09
in the truck monitoring the truck driver
19:13
right now what would you think there
19:15
would you make any changes
19:18
in your operation me personally if if
19:21
one of the people that i’ve hired
19:23
is incompetent so incompetent that i
19:26
have to hire someone else to watch them
19:28
i’d start to think maybe i don’t need
19:30
that incompetent person if they are
19:32
indeed incompetent
19:33
maybe the person who is who is much more
19:36
competent
19:36
should be the one that’s actually doing
19:38
the driving i would think
19:40
exactly so i used a restaurant example
19:43
and i you know use four or five
19:44
jobs in a restaurant hostess cook etc
19:47
and say you want a really good
19:48
restaurant you should have a supervisor
19:50
supervisor over every person if you take
19:52
the logic of management
19:54
and many of the reasons for it to its
19:56
ultimate conclusion
19:58
you’d have a supervisor for every single
19:59
person so our bottom line is
20:02
you either yes you either have the
20:03
person driving the truck who’s really
20:04
confident or you take the one who’s
20:05
really confident and put them in that
20:06
truck
20:07
driving exactly a seat right yeah okay
20:10
so that’s
20:10
that’s what i saw that’s what i see so
20:12
that’s how it uh recently evolved
20:15
to where you can’t really supervise the
20:16
truck drivers so you’re dependent on
20:18
them
20:21
this is so fast so they’re managing
20:22
themselves right
20:24
so this is kind of applying the same way
20:27
that libertarians we think
20:28
okay so you don’t trust the people for
20:31
example like in a political setting
20:33
you don’t trust the people so we need to
20:35
hire
20:36
politicians to look over them but yet
20:40
so you can’t trust people with their own
20:41
freedom but you can trust them to have
20:43
control over everyone else’s life
20:46
but the way that we pick them is through
20:48
the people that you don’t trust to make
20:50
decisions for themselves
20:51
so it’s kind of a simple it’s like okay
20:52
if you don’t trust them why don’t we
20:54
just
20:55
replace them with someone who you do
20:57
trust so
20:58
obviously this this doesn’t just work
21:00
with trucking this works with
21:03
uh this works with that anything because
21:05
in all reality
21:06
you really can’t supervise personally as
21:09
a boss
21:09
you can’t individually supervise all of
21:12
your employees
21:13
so why not instead hire good employees
21:16
and figure it out from there now two of
21:17
the biggest criticisms
21:18
of the self-management model that that
21:20
some of my audience may be thinking
21:22
that they often hear with something like
21:23
this would only work in a small company
21:25
or only work with unskilled workers well
21:28
morningstar employs
21:29
hundreds of full-time employees and
21:31
thousands of seasonal workers
21:33
uh it is definitely not a small company
21:34
by any stretch and it also has
21:36
workers of every type of skill set from
21:39
you know uh
21:40
farming to production to distribution to
21:42
marketing
21:43
you know and acquisition and everything
21:46
in between
21:46
that you would need to have for a large
21:48
uh food processing and distribution and
21:50
marketing company
21:51
um so chris you obviously you know you
21:54
have a lot of information here
21:56
uh that you can share you know tell us
21:59
give us i guess
21:59
a basic breakdown with with the the info
22:02
that you have
22:03
how this model i guess the brass tacks
22:06
of how this model works and we can kind
22:07
of go from there
22:10
yeah i can go through these things very
22:11
well but on a point that you just
22:13
brought up
22:14
uh about how does it scale well what’s
22:17
this largest scale we have on this earth
22:19
from a human scale we have our society
22:23
so let’s take the united states of
22:24
america 330 million people
22:26
which is pretty large scale that was one
22:28
company right yes
22:30
how does it work without a you know we
22:32
can say government’s really managing us
22:33
but they’re not they’re not
22:34
they’re managing a little bit of this
22:36
and that a lot of stuff but on a
22:38
day-to-day basis
22:39
on choosing your spouse or choosing
22:41
where to live and what car
22:42
car to drive or how to dress it’s you
22:45
so what’s going on there see i asked
22:48
people what is your fundamental mission
22:50
in life and it’s amazing if
22:51
people just hard to answer that one
22:54
but so i’ll try it real quick because we
22:56
don’t have the x amount of time
22:57
you know people have a mission to be
22:59
happy and most people will within relate
23:02
to that
23:03
so each people in society have a have a
23:06
mission
23:07
and they don’t recognize it but why you
23:09
have that color tie on spike
23:11
and why did you choose those glasses out
23:12
of probably 150 or 300
23:15
eyeglasses too so you go to the
23:17
optometrist and there’s
23:18
all these different styles and sizes of
23:20
glasses you pick one
23:22
maybe two but whatever you picked one
23:25
out of all those why’d you pick that one
23:26
somehow that all the cost and the color
23:30
and
23:30
this and this is going to satisfy me the
23:33
most
23:33
among all the choices what’s going to
23:36
bring me the most happiness
23:37
what food am i going to eat so everybody
23:39
has a personal
23:41
mission so i transfer that into a
23:43
company and call it we call it our
23:44
personal
23:45
commercial mission so your commercial
23:48
mission
23:49
as a truck driver is to is to
23:52
drive to a place to pick up some
23:54
materials and safely and swiftly
23:57
uh drive it to another place delivered
24:00
to another location
24:01
okay safely and swiftly and and
24:05
correctly pick up the right stuff so
24:07
they have a mission
24:08
so we say that’s your mission so the key
24:10
thing in self-management is
24:12
it’s driven by your mission very similar
24:15
to how the united states works
24:16
we all have our own missions but very
24:18
common mission and we drive to our
24:20
mission
24:21
and that’s how we make our choices so in
24:23
the company it’s your personal
24:24
commercial mission
24:25
that drives you choice is not another
24:27
person so your personal commercial
24:29
mission is your boss
24:31
that’s where you get your direction not
24:33
from another human being
24:34
but from your personal commercial
24:36
mission now as you recognize in the
24:38
route out in the world here you’re
24:41
you’re i don’t know if you
24:42
you made that tie spike but you probably
24:44
bought it from somebody else so you
24:45
coordinate with other people you
24:46
coordinate with hundreds dozens and
24:48
hundreds if
24:48
not thousands of people you coordinate
24:51
your life with you know you didn’t build
24:52
the airplane you didn’t hire the
24:54
airplane pilot but you got an airplane
24:55
it flew somewhere so
24:57
you’re coordinating with many many
24:58
people based on their own their personal
25:00
commercial business also
25:02
and proudly didn’t tell you how to get
25:04
on a plane the barber didn’t tell you
25:06
you got to go to me you come to me
25:08
and the person that is selling you a
25:09
pizza is trying to convince you to buy
25:12
that pizza because it’s a great quality
25:13
pizza they don’t use a gun
25:15
to shove you into their pizza store so
25:17
we’re all living based on our
25:19
missions and that’s a core philosophy in
25:21
self management
25:22
so so this is actually a big thing here
25:25
is that
25:26
part of the underlying idea of
25:28
self-management is a libertarian idea
25:31
uh not just in its its praxis how it’s
25:33
actually playing out
25:34
but in its in in its fundamental
25:36
principle it’s elementary founding
25:39
foundational idea which is that
25:40
you know each of us is is empowered to
25:44
be able to make our own decisions
25:46
each of us has a level of autonomy over
25:47
ourselves and
25:49
and and that really the only uh guidance
25:51
that we should be receiving
25:53
is don’t hurt other people don’t coerce
25:57
other people
25:57
don’t try to harm other people or
25:59
violate their rights and their uh
26:01
personal autonomy and self-ownership if
26:03
you will and
26:04
uh and and be able to conduct yourself
26:06
accordingly and you have been able to
26:08
apply these principles uh not just in
26:11
your personal life like as you said you
26:12
know we’re all out here trying to figure
26:13
things out for our life
26:14
but also in your actual business model
26:17
um i i just find that absolutely
26:19
uh fascinating now you mentioned a
26:21
mission now you have
26:23
a a a company-wide mission statement
26:26
and then there are individual
26:27
departments that have their mission
26:29
statements
26:30
and then am i correct that each
26:31
individual employee has their own
26:33
personal company mission statement and i
26:35
think you were talking about that is
26:37
that is that correct
26:39
right we have it we have our overall
26:41
vision
26:42
and then each of the we have a number of
26:44
companies so they’re
26:46
legally financially separated out to
26:48
speak right right but uh so they
26:50
my trucking when it’s harvesting once
26:52
tomato processing
26:54
we dry tomatoes that’s another thing we
26:55
make pizza sauce another company
26:58
so we have a few different they have
26:59
their own mission
27:01
so that’s that’s the company that
27:03
company’s mission
27:05
and then you have you got to get down to
27:08
the people’s personal commercial mission
27:11
so you got a few layers of missions
27:14
within that within your enterprise
27:16
and i call it as a concept of total
27:18
responsibility which is
27:20
anti-mba business school so it’s you
27:23
know if you don’t if you’ve got common
27:24
admissions nothing will get common
27:26
responsibilities nothing will get done
27:28
you have to get very clear on your
27:30
responsibilities and interactivities and
27:33
they shouldn’t be overlapping they
27:34
should be clear so
27:37
it’s expected that people take total
27:38
responsibility for the enterprise
27:40
from the total enterprise to their
27:42
business to their to their business unit
27:44
within the company
27:46
and to enter themselves so people think
27:48
that’s crazy but
27:49
and i say well gee what’s the what’s the
27:51
most fundamental long-lasting
27:53
unit we have in our culture in our
27:55
humanity
27:56
it’s a family so i don’t know what kind
27:59
of family different people grow up and i
28:01
was very
28:02
very traditional you know dad worked mom
28:04
was at home
28:05
three kids three boys and uh but
28:08
you know my dad didn’t take
28:10
responsibility for
28:11
one of the children and my mom for
28:13
another they took total responsibility
28:15
for
28:16
the family and it all worked out pretty
28:18
good now their activities were
28:20
principally different but the total
28:22
responsibility was that
28:24
you know i’ll take i’ll i’m responsible
28:26
for the entire family
28:27
if mom’s doing the cooking or dad’s
28:29
gonna doing the cooking whatever it is
28:30
that’s their general activity but if mom
28:32
went to the hospital for some reason and
28:34
she had a
28:35
belly or some something happen and she
28:37
was in hospital for three days do you
28:38
think the kids are gonna starve
28:40
no dad who doesn’t know how to cook that
28:42
well is gonna feed the kids
28:44
right so that’s what i think that’s
28:45
another concept we have is total
28:47
responsibility
28:49
and so sh and and and neither would your
28:51
dad go and find a temporary mom or
28:54
something like that
28:54
she wouldn’t take care of it until until
28:57
your mom was okay and able to come back
28:59
and fulfill
29:00
or you can figure out the problem some
29:02
other way yep
29:03
or figure out a long-term problem if god
29:05
forbid there were a longer-term issue or
29:06
something like that
29:07
but within the family structure this is
29:10
i this is everything i try to tell
29:11
people all day so
29:12
um my first question when i was finding
29:15
out about this model the first thing
29:17
that popped up in my head and again i’m
29:19
very libertarian
29:20
uh i i am i like to think of myself as
29:23
the most libertarian that’s there is no
29:25
such thing but i i
29:26
i’m very libertarian but the first thing
29:28
i thought was okay but without managers
29:31
how does an employee over here know what
29:34
does
29:35
what hap how the rest of the company
29:37
works so for example if i work in
29:38
marketing which
29:39
if i worked for you i would be in
29:40
marketing and i need to talk to someone
29:43
in
29:43
processing or the kitchen about a
29:46
specific
29:46
issue or question that arose without
29:49
having those interlocutors
29:51
you know built into the management class
29:53
how do i even find out who to talk to
29:54
about a specific thing how does that
29:56
the brass tax of that work it’s actually
30:00
pretty easy because
30:00
again you’ve got your tie so what did
30:02
you do
30:04
did you have to have a manager to go
30:05
tell you where to go to get a tie so
30:08
yeah some things you don’t know where to
30:09
go but you start asking and you find out
30:12
so we have no uh there’s no restrictions
30:13
on people talking to other people
30:15
so what you’ve got is a this is similar
30:17
to what they call a uh
30:19
what’s a game for the kids and you speak
30:21
to each other uh
30:22
oh telephone they’re here right
30:25
telephone
30:27
telephone you got it okay so the
30:29
telephone game
30:30
so when you’ve got this whole management
30:32
structure what you got going on is
30:34
is susie has a problem in customer
30:37
service where she is customer service
30:39
and then uh jane over here is over here
30:42
shipping loads out a product that
30:45
customer service wants to get out
30:46
because they gotta order from the
30:47
customer
30:48
and somehow suzie’s complaining about
30:51
jane or so
30:52
that well james not doing something
30:54
right so so there’s a way to go for
30:56
for the first person to complain to a
30:58
supervisor
31:00
who then complains to the common
31:02
supervisor
31:04
the general general manager of the
31:05
warehouse who then complains
31:07
and discusses with the supervisor of the
31:09
loading the truck uh the
31:11
forklift drivers and they talk to the
31:13
forklift drivers over here
31:14
that are getting this so there’s a
31:15
telephone there of four or five
31:17
different
31:18
mouths to ears so how does that story go
31:21
so we have a concept of one on one you
31:24
got an issue with somebody you want to
31:25
talk something about whatever it is and
31:27
you can talk to whomever you want to
31:28
you go talk to them there’s no
31:31
intermediaries
31:32
so in finding out what people do you you
31:34
have a lot of fluidity
31:36
to number one just like you bought the
31:38
tie where do i get it i you know you
31:39
talk a few people oh you can get a good
31:41
tie over there and that’s how our
31:42
society works right
31:44
you go to a new town or wherever you
31:45
move in hey hey where’s a good
31:46
restaurant town
31:47
you fly into a town what do you ask you
31:49
know before you go there hey where’s a
31:50
good place to stay here’s my budget on a
31:52
hotel
31:53
so you ask people and you find out real
31:54
fast so you get into
31:56
our company first you’re kind of going
31:58
to come in with a mission anyway because
31:59
why did you come in because the people
32:00
at
32:01
our company felt they need we you know
32:03
we could do better off if we had
32:04
so-and-so
32:05
uh driving we need another forklift
32:08
driver we needed a customer service
32:09
person needed a sales person
32:10
we needed our account so we’d be
32:12
beneficial if we had another account
32:14
because our business has grown
32:16
and we’re stretched and we’re not paying
32:17
our bills as well as we should because
32:19
we’re a little delayed because they
32:20
haven’t got the right number of people
32:21
we need to hire somebody
32:23
so you have a need to hire somebody so
32:24
they come in with a mission with pretty
32:26
general understanding of what they’re
32:27
going to be doing
32:28
okay it’s not that not that wacko so
32:30
it’s pretty normal and once they get in
32:32
they’re free to talk to whomever and i
32:35
have brought on people
32:36
at a facility and they have this
32:38
position over here i remember coming in
32:40
once and i’m
32:40
coming eight or months or 15 months
32:42
later and and i go say
32:44
what what are you doing over here oh
32:46
well so-and-so and i decided that you
32:47
know i had this experience that
32:49
that uh that that would be better suited
32:51
over here than over here these guys
32:52
agreed
32:53
that i can go work over here and then
32:55
they would hire another person or they
32:56
would bring someone over here
32:57
so they you know they decided they want
32:59
to move around a little bit
33:01
to the best of everybody so they have
33:03
the ability to do that you know
33:04
is your mission covered and your your
33:07
your business unit’s mission covered
33:09
okay goat make some changes you know you
33:12
get it you gotta you put some balls in a
33:13
and what’s that game you put a ball in a
33:16
little small marbles into a bigger
33:20
container and you shake it up and it
33:22
kind of rolls around so that everybody
33:24
gets into kind of a nice place right
33:26
right so that’s what self-management
33:29
allows you to do it’s spontaneous or the
33:32
first thing you have to say in yours
33:33
mission focused self-management brings
33:35
organizational structure
33:36
to an enterprise spontaneously
33:39
so it’s spontaneous reply to a business
33:41
model it’s
33:42
i was going to say spontaneous order
33:44
applied to a business model so wait just
33:46
so i understand
33:47
employment decisions are being made
33:49
without you knowing sometimes
33:52
oh yeah it’s happened almost forever
33:57
yeah i’ve got a heck of a mayor if
33:59
you’re going to go and sell cars and
34:01
and the person selling car is going to
34:02
go and and market ties no
34:06
you figured out yourself i
34:09
love this i love i didn’t even know that
34:11
so okay
34:12
here here’s a here’s here oh i’m sorry
34:14
go ahead go ahead
34:16
no no go ahead okay so there is here’s
34:19
an example that i read about within your
34:21
company
34:21
it was in an article that i was reading
34:23
when i researched it
34:24
here’s kind of a perfect example of how
34:27
this
34:28
this uh self-managed model works within
34:30
the company so there was an employee of
34:32
yours that worked in customer service
34:34
uh his job was essentially uh to find
34:36
out what potential customers wanted
34:38
um he actually started cold calling
34:40
customers or actually uh i think
34:42
prospective customers
34:43
to find out what their needs were and
34:45
discover that they were lo
34:46
the ones that were located in more
34:48
distant places uh felt like that they
34:50
were having to pay too much
34:51
for morningstar’s products and so he got
34:54
together
34:55
some other colleagues within the company
34:56
uh and decided that uh ultimately what
34:58
needed to be done was there needed to be
35:00
more
35:00
uh distribution centers across the
35:02
country uh that would help to solve that
35:04
problem and make it
35:05
make it the cheaper in those areas he
35:08
had no prior experience
35:09
with distribution centers so instead of
35:11
going to management or this
35:13
never happening because the people that
35:15
are in charge of this aren’t talking to
35:17
the people in in in marketing
35:19
uh he instead enlisted the support of
35:22
another person within the company
35:23
uh who had experience in distribution
35:26
centers
35:26
they worked on it together and within a
35:28
few months they were setting up
35:30
distribution centers across the country
35:32
and i just think that’s the most
35:33
beautiful thing that i’ve ever read
35:35
uh uh when it comes to a business model
35:38
now you have something called
35:39
a a colleague letter of understanding
35:42
clou can you tell us a little bit about
35:44
that and how that works into all this
35:47
yes it’s calling a letter of
35:49
understanding it’s it’s so we we
35:51
we short it’s a clue which somewhat
35:54
represents what it is
35:55
but it’s a it’s our core organizing of
36:00
document or official organizing document
36:03
so call it letter of understanding is
36:05
basically what it’s your understanding
36:07
what your deal is between your other
36:08
colleagues
36:10
so what’s your mission what are your
36:12
responsibilities
36:14
what are your activities well how are
36:16
you going to measure the performance of
36:17
those activities
36:19
what’s considered perfect performance
36:22
so it lays that out yeah it lays out a
36:24
career
36:25
a career plan so what’s your long-term
36:27
plan which is short-term plan
36:29
so it’s basically here’s my here’s my
36:31
deal with the company
36:34
that’s just so that’s to agree we need
36:36
to document this
36:37
and sometimes it’s very general
36:39
sometimes more specific
36:41
but it’s your understanding with other
36:42
folks on your commitments to them
36:46
and so how does the just and i mean i i
36:49
if any of this is proprietary or
36:51
you know is something that’s a inter you
36:53
know company sensitive thing let me know
36:55
but just
36:56
out of curiosity how does compensation
36:58
work in this because often in the
37:00
typical model
37:01
it’s largely managerial assessments
37:05
of how the employees are doing that
37:07
determine
37:08
if someone gets a raise if they get a a
37:11
a
37:12
a promotion or whatever or you know how
37:14
how does that work within within this
37:15
model how does
37:17
obviously someone yes they they want the
37:19
company to work better they want it to
37:20
do better but they also
37:22
want to be able to make more money from
37:23
it how does that how does that work out
37:25
in this
37:28
first it starts off with somebody coming
37:30
into the enterprise and they come in
37:31
because the
37:32
internally we’ve identified requirements
37:35
or needs we
37:36
would be we’d be better off if we had an
37:38
additional person with this skill level
37:41
okay those have market values out there
37:43
we advertise
37:44
we interview and we agree to hire
37:46
someone and of course at that time
37:48
there’s there’s a
37:49
discussion on compensation and there’s
37:51
agreement with whomever is doing the
37:52
hiring
37:53
with a new person on compensation
37:55
because that’s how it starts out
37:57
now after that on a year-to-year basis
37:59
what happens is that uh
38:01
we have compensation committees which
38:04
are selected by the local folks within
38:06
an operating group
38:08
so they form a committee and folks that
38:10
present their
38:11
their request to the committee
38:14
we have nominal guidance i don’t like
38:17
you know cost of living increases this
38:18
automatics but
38:20
it’s somewhat of a guide uh and there’s
38:22
competitive surveys and whatnot so
38:23
people present their
38:25
their thoughts on where they should be
38:27
what they’d like to see
38:28
uh some people get a little outrageous
38:30
but not too many
38:32
and uh this past year i’m sorry
38:35
let me continue on with the process so
38:37
they provide their recommendations
38:39
and then they they organize them and
38:42
they submit them to me
38:44
i’m getting a little uh i don’t the last
38:47
time i which is this last
38:48
december i went through every single
38:51
person
38:51
uh that’s not opening up their whole
38:53
personal file that i reviewed
38:55
500 people and which here permanently in
38:58
california
38:59
we bring on like 2500 people for our
39:01
season to operate with but
39:03
i went through the 500 people there and
39:05
some were very very quick
39:06
and there were only a few uh maybe there
39:08
was a 10
39:10
where there was questions no more than
39:11
15 where i had questions
39:13
or it was unclear and we had some some
39:16
issues
39:19
only one as of today sits on result so
39:22
somebody’s asking who’s very good person
39:24
but
39:24
they’re asking for 15 raise and when you
39:27
look at the competitive landscape on the
39:29
thing
39:29
and not really and you look at their
39:32
skill levels so
39:33
we’re doing that as a as a team you
39:35
might say so the person presented
39:37
because i said okay well i’ve gone over
39:39
everything here’s bonuses
39:41
here’s compensation most of them are
39:43
basically as as agreed to by the
39:45
compensation committees
39:46
a few are not but if there’s any issues
39:49
i want to know
39:50
and we want to know together if anybody
39:52
doesn’t agree with what by how it’s
39:53
coming down so
39:54
we’ve got one issue going on right now
39:56
but uh that’ll be solved
39:58
so out of 500 employees give or take
40:02
uh and not to mention thousands of
40:04
seasonal workers but out of 500
40:06
employees
40:06
you have one outstanding situation when
40:09
it comes to compensation and role and
40:10
all of that
40:11
in this model which i would imagine in
40:13
most companies of a similar size
40:15
with a managerial model there’s probably
40:17
more than one
40:18
or it just gets buried and never dealt
40:20
with and that person gets disgruntled
40:22
and leaves or you know something like
40:24
that but you have one
40:25
outstanding issue which like you said
40:27
it’s going to get resolved it’s just
40:29
it’s still obviously after a month we
40:31
probably had five or ten uh
40:32
you know like i said five or ten there
40:34
you know upon going through all the
40:36
all the reviews but those got settled
40:39
pretty quickly
40:40
that is so interesting i i just think
40:42
that this is
40:43
incredible now we have a couple of
40:45
questions um one that came up well let
40:48
me find it again
40:49
um a lot of people saying how
40:51
fascinating they find this this
40:52
just like uh just like i am uh but one
40:55
question
40:57
where is it oh i should have i should
40:59
have flagged it hold on
41:00
um oh so how would you say
41:04
overall um you know
41:07
if i and i don’t know if this is done in
41:09
turn internally but how is the
41:11
like the the workplace happiness uh you
41:14
know overall how
41:15
how people are or i guess retention is
41:16
retention good compared to to other
41:18
companies
41:20
i don’t know about other companies that
41:22
speak of ours seems to be pretty good
41:24
you know i’ll tell you over over many
41:26
years and especially the last
41:29
five six seven years
41:32
retention and people showing up to work
41:34
has gone down
41:36
i’ve got a 30 plus year history on truck
41:38
drivers
41:39
on they apply for they called for the
41:42
job
41:42
we sent an application did they return
41:44
the application
41:46
did they were they called for interview
41:47
did they show for an interview you know
41:49
where they interviewed
41:50
uh were they accepted did they go into
41:52
training
41:53
did they start the season the defensive
41:55
season and it’s a very clear
41:57
trend to a lower level of responsibility
42:00
because you know yes i’ll come i’ll send
42:03
the application back
42:04
i’ll do there do they not okay you got
42:07
an appointment for
42:08
an interview do they show up or do not
42:09
show up more and more people are just
42:12
making commitments and not fulfilling
42:13
commitments uh
42:15
in general and i hear that from business
42:17
people all over the place
42:18
yeah we’ve had uh very good retention
42:21
and uh you don’t want too good of
42:22
retention or you’re too good of a
42:23
situation but uh
42:25
uh so i can’t compare the other coming
42:27
speaker but i think we’re doing pretty
42:28
good
42:28
there’s a that’s a lot of long-term
42:30
folks here as there isn’t many companies
42:32
and happiness level we we measure that
42:35
now how does it compare with others
42:36
you know we’re higher than average we’re
42:37
not where i want to be which would be
42:39
perfect
42:39
and top but uh it’s very very close
42:43
we had surveys by some people at the
42:45
university of maryland
42:46
we surveyed about 100 at least 100 give
42:49
or take folks and
42:50
seasonal folks at one of our factories
42:52
and found
42:53
and found a higher level of what they
42:55
considered they stayed at a higher level
42:56
a high as high
42:58
level of sense of ownership among their
43:01
colleagues these are seasonal folks
43:02
for the most part that general
43:05
executives feel
43:07
a sense of ownership so when you give
43:09
people responsibility and they have
43:11
responsibility
43:12
they actually perform better and they
43:14
enjoy it more i mean it gives them some
43:16
feeling of control
43:18
it’s the difference between waking up to
43:20
be a cog in a machine
43:22
and waking up to fulfill a purpose that
43:24
you have helped you have worked with
43:26
others
43:27
to set for yourself um
43:30
this is just beyond fascinating so uh
43:32
okay so another question
43:34
uh that came in um uh because you are
43:37
primarily based in california although
43:39
you do have distribution centers
43:41
their question was basically uh and the
43:44
word commie form
43:45
fornia was uh was in their question uh
43:48
but they said
43:49
you know california is one of the most
43:52
you know among the 50 states among the
43:55
most restrictive
43:56
when it comes to regulations and things
43:58
like that do you find
44:00
that that it’s dip you know difficult to
44:02
manage that do you find that this
44:04
model makes it easier to manage through
44:06
those different you know
44:08
uh labor and environmental and safety
44:09
and those types of and just general
44:11
regulations and taxes in general
44:13
talk to us about that yeah a few
44:16
comments
44:16
uh about that uh california has the
44:19
highest uh
44:20
poverty rate of the united states if you
44:22
look at
44:23
compare these are the costs of the so
44:26
yeah we we’ve got the uh very liberal
44:28
uh and personally levels are great but i
44:30
mean politically that’s that turns into
44:32
a different situation
44:35
it makes it tougher to do business i’ll
44:36
tell you and a few of the things that
44:38
are just
44:39
they want to be nice but they’re causing
44:40
big problems in operations
44:42
uh they passed the law a few years ago
44:44
that even seasonal people have
44:46
uh three days paid sick leave
44:50
well i didn’t hear that that law until
44:53
uh after the season and i said what’s
44:55
going on here what happened i mean
44:57
they had people just not they they go
44:59
work the season then they find out
45:01
first it was maybe 20 25 of folks
45:03
understood this law
45:04
employees seasonal employees yeah so
45:06
because in the season they start not
45:08
showing up
45:10
it’s supposed to be for sick leave but
45:12
no it’s taken as a while i’m sick
45:14
you know i’m watching ball today or i’m
45:15
playing baseball uh and then it turned
45:18
into more and then it’s like
45:19
almost almost 100 percent of people just
45:21
take those three days as automatic
45:23
gifts it’s not being used for cycling
45:26
very hard
45:27
we’re getting a little used to it now
45:29
after three or four years
45:31
on how to manage this but to have ten
45:34
percent of your folks not
45:35
show up for a work on a given day
45:39
as a surprise how do you operate like
45:41
that
45:42
it’s tough so those are things let’s be
45:44
nice let’s give people
45:46
sickly sick leave if they’re sick but
45:49
it turns into something else people take
45:50
advantage of it the uh
45:53
the regulations on on the water and the
45:55
air and things like that
45:56
they’re all meant to be good but they’re
45:57
they’re tougher but those things we
45:59
we deal with uh i don’t want to go too
46:02
far with
46:02
this uh comparison but you know i
46:06
understand people that you know
46:07
well you’re gonna die in a year you’ve
46:09
got cancer that bad hit on a
46:11
front but you know then people kind of
46:13
their happiness level gets back and they
46:15
you know they they exist better than you
46:17
think
46:18
people are going to jail and it’s
46:20
terrible enough you know what somehow
46:21
they manage
46:22
how to deal with it so we’re not in jail
46:24
and we’re not we haven’t got cancer
46:25
but it is tough right right there’s just
46:27
no question about it these things that
46:29
that they’re pushing through do you
46:32
think that there’d be a threshold
46:34
where you would say let’s move to
46:35
another another state or
46:37
or is it not worth that well if it was
46:39
operationally possible but you see
46:41
growing tomatoes
46:42
california is the prime place to grow
46:45
tomatoes
46:46
and to process them for various reasons
46:48
so our business is
46:49
based here for um for reasons that are
46:52
beyond the uh
46:54
this political part so we have 96 of the
46:57
processed tomatoes are grown in
46:58
california
46:59
we get the highest yields we have a long
47:01
season long season promotes a lower
47:03
manufacturing cost
47:04
so this is by far the lowest cost place
47:08
to process tomatoes
47:09
in the country and frankly in the world
47:12
so so we’re based here if it was a
47:15
business like
47:16
tesla or one of these other companies
47:17
where you really could you know you can
47:19
manufacture cars here or there
47:20
you’d move to texas and i’ll hurt you
47:22
and i’m surprised why major
47:24
corporations are still sitting in san
47:25
francisco and why very many people are
47:27
sitting in especially
47:28
downtown san francisco it’s a joke
47:31
yeah so you so be because of the nature
47:35
of
47:36
of the because you’re dealing with the
47:37
earth basically when you’re when you’re
47:39
when you’re dealing with like uh
47:40
environmental things like you know where
47:42
it’s best to grow a
47:43
a crop a given crop that’s something
47:45
that is
47:46
far offsets any any restrictions coming
47:48
from government um
47:49
so here was uh another question that
47:51
came up um
47:53
uh when you uh recruit uh do you find
47:57
that uh the people that are coming to
47:59
your company
48:00
are basically you know are coming
48:03
precisely because
48:05
of your type of model that they feel
48:06
like it would be the most rewarding type
48:08
of thing or
48:09
do you find that they come and then
48:10
they’re surprised and happy
48:12
do you think that you’re you’re actually
48:14
targeting some of the best by virtue of
48:15
the actual the way your model works
48:18
i think it’s more important on the
48:19
retention side that people have been
48:21
somewhere and they experience what’s
48:23
here and they appreciate that and they
48:24
value it
48:25
as far as people coming to the company
48:27
for that we’re just not
48:28
we’re not a public company we haven’t
48:30
got a brand like apple so we’re not well
48:32
known
48:33
very locally we are and uh respected for
48:36
what we do along those lines
48:38
but it’s more when they experience it uh
48:40
they enjoy it now
48:42
that’s separated the people that come
48:44
better might say seasonal or
48:46
or the uh most of the folks in the
48:48
facilities
48:50
they they they enjoy it and they
48:51
experience it and they like it i’ve had
48:53
the biggest problem
48:55
with more management senior management
48:57
type folks
48:58
and we don’t have titles we don’t have
49:00
vote managers in the traditional sense
49:02
right we have people who have more
49:03
influence than others
49:04
but an influence based on integrity and
49:06
confidence not
49:07
title position so there’s no question
49:10
there’s different people and different
49:11
doing things that you call the managers
49:13
and whatnot
49:14
but uh but they don’t have that that
49:16
formal capability
49:17
but i but the biggest problem bringing
49:19
on people at what you’d call in
49:21
normal companies say vice president
49:23
level for sure
49:24
coming in oh this sounds great wow i’ve
49:27
heard about this kind of thing and
49:29
yeah in a business school we talked
49:30
about something i heard about this
49:32
maslow’s management what not but this
49:35
sounds great this is what i always
49:36
wanted this is super it’s gonna be great
49:38
they have the biggest failure rate and i
49:40
liken it to
49:42
you break your leg you get a cast
49:46
and you know your cast is a temporary
49:48
thing you get after a while you take it
49:50
off and your leg gets better
49:51
but if you keep the cast on too long
49:53
what happens to your leg
49:56
it just atrophies yeah so same thing
49:59
when people grow up kids natural leaders
50:02
show up you know the local
50:04
sandlot baseball team the natural
50:05
leaders pop up school
50:07
college the natural leaders come up
50:09
they’re the class president or the
50:10
organizational leader they’re the
50:12
president of the sailing club or the
50:13
chess
50:14
club or whatever right and they
50:15
naturally then they get into management
50:17
and then business school today my
50:18
daughter was a
50:19
business school event like 12 years ago
50:21
and should you know it’s like my
50:22
employees i hate that term like you all
50:24
know they’re slaves
50:26
and but it’s your manager they’re an
50:28
employee
50:29
and whatnot so they they then go out
50:32
into business and they get this
50:34
gun i call it a gun where you can
50:36
actually you know your
50:37
power is a manager when you have the
50:39
authority over other people’s
50:42
compensation their career path
50:45
and right people just naturally have a
50:48
tendency
50:49
tendency everybody to some degree and if
50:51
you can resist that’s
50:52
that’s super but uh to use that power
50:55
because you want to get things done
50:56
right now
50:57
every once in the things that get things
50:59
done quickly and swiftly and boom the
51:01
first way to do it is
51:02
hey do that yes sir uh any quibble you
51:05
pull out the gun no you will do it and
51:07
you get things done fast
51:09
right are they done effectively do
51:10
people respect you for that so i’m
51:12
interested in long-term respect
51:14
not that so most people i i’m most i
51:17
guess it would be most people come in a
51:19
senior level type position
51:20
it sounds great uh it’s like jumping out
51:23
an airplane but
51:24
with a parachute sounds great but get up
51:26
there and look down and see if you want
51:28
to jump
51:29
so they get up there and they have to do
51:31
it they have lost the
51:32
leaders true leadership capability their
51:35
managers
51:36
but they’re for they their their ability
51:38
to leader has atrophied like that like
51:40
in the cast
51:41
so they’ve had the gun too long they get
51:44
frustrated that they can’t get things
51:45
done fast because
51:46
we’ve had a senior guy come in come to
51:48
work with company and this guy was a phd
51:50
in organizational development
51:52
and he comes and talks to one one of the
51:55
young ladies have been the company for a
51:56
number of years and
51:58
and oh can you give me some coffee get
51:59
it yourself i mean
52:02
he had to figure this out you know now
52:05
if you asked her she may have done that
52:07
right no this ordering doesn’t work so
52:10
uh so that’s the problem biggest problem
52:12
i haven’t bringing people in from the
52:13
outside
52:14
is they’re attracted to it at a secret
52:16
level and but they can’t
52:18
perform they’ve lost the ability but
52:20
folks and most of the rest of the folks
52:22
are
52:22
are great the ones that are really good
52:23
folks and they really want to
52:25
they’re passionate about what they do
52:27
they love it
52:29
so it’s the people that have actual
52:31
value in what they
52:33
in what they can actually do for others
52:35
as opposed to their value being their
52:37
ability to make other people do stuff
52:40
they’re the ones that thrive the ones
52:42
who have like you said they have the
52:43
atrophy from the fact that they’ve
52:45
always just been able to point
52:46
the proverbial gun of i i can ruin your
52:48
life at them
52:49
uh instead of actually inspiring uh
52:52
confidence
52:53
and uh inspiring uh you know inspiring
52:56
work and and being a leader that that
52:58
leads by example and through inspiration
53:01
it doesn’t work well because they don’t
53:03
actually fit in your company
53:04
the reason that they don’t like it is
53:06
because your company’s not built on a on
53:08
a
53:08
an unnatural hierarchy based on i have
53:10
this mba therefore you have to listen to
53:12
me
53:13
it’s based on you’re going to want to
53:15
listen to me
53:16
because i’ve demonstrated that i know
53:18
what i’m talking about
53:20
and that when i do things that they work
53:22
well and if if you’ve learned to just
53:24
rest on your presumed authority then
53:26
it’s not going to work i just find this
53:28
incredibly fascinating let me ask you
53:30
this what and and this is actually based
53:31
on a couple different i’m i’m
53:33
hybridizing a few different questions
53:34
that came in
53:35
uh someone comes in they’re good at
53:38
uh they’re good at what they’re doing
53:40
they like the company
53:42
do you often find that people have to
53:43
kind of unlearn the way
53:46
that it usually works in other companies
53:48
uh or do
53:49
or or do you find that once they’re in
53:50
there it’s just really a natural fit
53:54
oh they come both and the ones that uh
53:56
that
53:57
need to be converted you might say or
53:58
need to understand the system
54:00
sometimes it is very very tough for
54:01
those people to make it they’re so used
54:03
to somebody else telling them what to do
54:05
and so they don’t last as long the ones
54:08
that uh
54:09
have some reasonably aggressiveness or
54:12
or
54:12
interested in what they’re doing and how
54:13
to improve their performance
54:15
and they have the freedom to do that and
54:17
to learn and wander a little bit
54:19
they do great this is just beyond
54:22
fascinating
54:23
um uh oh here was a question what are
54:26
the kind of
54:26
you know uh you know most companies have
54:28
obviously some kind of causes charitable
54:30
causes and things like that
54:31
what are the kind of uh you know the
54:33
kind of causes that that you and the
54:35
company
54:36
uh support outside of obviously the
54:37
company itself
54:42
we look at it very locally so each of
54:45
the facilities have
54:46
a quote semi-budget to work with county
54:49
fairs
54:51
local 4-h clubs uh local community
54:54
groups
54:55
so we work we work on that level and we
54:57
our our facilities are in small towns
55:00
so we uh you know if you go to los banos
55:01
you’ll see the morning star
55:03
football uh you know name on the
55:05
football uh
55:06
score thing that cost whatever a hundred
55:08
thousand dollars to
55:09
to put up and something about high
55:11
school and so we support local
55:13
local activities so even that why did i
55:17
not think that so even these types of
55:18
decisions are being decided by the
55:20
i love this so much oh my gosh um
55:24
you have some people asking if they can
55:25
work for you um how does someone apply
55:28
to get a job at morningstar by the way
55:29
do you only hire in california because i
55:31
had a few people say
55:32
if you if you hire outside of california
55:34
they want they want to get a job but
55:36
they don’t want to live in california
55:39
we don’t have too many too many
55:40
out-of-state uh positions we have a few
55:43
uh very few but those are circumstantial
55:47
or
55:48
or they evolved from someone in
55:49
california moving and being able to do
55:51
their job
55:52
at some other location other than that
55:54
we have
55:55
actually another office over here
55:56
there’s basically a foundation facility
55:59
here at this
56:00
this office complex but eric andreessen
56:03
here
56:04
in a couple doors down here he handles
56:07
uh applications
56:08
but we have applications any of the
56:09
facilities in our main office
56:11
we don’t really have a main office but
56:12
there’s one office i could mail us in or
56:14
with an office
56:16
so you know write a letter or or send an
56:19
email to eric or somebody else in the
56:20
company
56:22
so and the website is morningstar
56:26
uh hold on
56:34
there’s a lot of morning stars if you
56:35
actually get around to it
56:38
yeah i know i that was my problem was
56:39
when i was looking i had to put morning
56:41
star chris roofer because
56:42
it was there was like a thousand morning
56:44
stars of all different types the
56:46
there’s a big uh vegan processed food
56:48
company called morningstar
56:50
because if you just put in morning star
56:51
california does not narrow it down
56:53
um there’s a ton of the morning stars in
56:55
uh in uh
56:56
there was one other question i wanted to
56:58
ask you and i’m trying to find it here
57:01
um it’s someone experienced that someone
57:03
just saying their mind’s being blown
57:05
just like mine is right now i love it so
57:07
much oh someone asked me
57:08
is my k is uh uh if i run for office
57:11
again is my campaign going to be managed
57:13
this way
57:13
so i can tell you this uh patricia my uh
57:16
my uh uh that right now i have a social
57:20
media team
57:21
a media team an events team a
57:23
communications team
57:24
and it as of right now it’s all
57:26
volunteers and i
57:28
am actually largely employing
57:32
a similar model to this obviously it’s
57:34
just employ you know volunteer base we
57:36
all have a similar mission and what
57:37
we’re trying to do
57:38
but yeah i’m i’m it is based on the idea
57:41
of
57:41
i can’t especially if i’m not paying
57:43
them i can’t say hey you do this because
57:45
i told you to
57:46
i often we collaborate together
57:50
on how best to to uh to come up with
57:53
these types of solutions
57:54
and things like that um and oh someone
57:57
else asked
57:57
what the name of this model is so this
57:59
is a mission-focused
58:01
self-managed model but it’s really this
58:03
is your model right like this isn’t
58:04
something you find in a textbook is it
58:08
uh it’s our model but there’s a few
58:10
other people who had this
58:12
uh a similar model to some degree
58:15
so there’s more and more we’ve got when
58:17
we’re on the
58:18
face of the harvard business review
58:19
about 10 years ago
58:21
and uh the cover page on harvard
58:23
business review is that was the feature
58:25
story was
58:26
was us it’s been about 25 on probably 20
58:28
or 30 books and
58:29
magazine articles major magazine
58:31
articles about
58:32
about morningstar but there’s others a
58:35
few others that have similar models so
58:36
when you get into you find
58:37
other folks that have a have somewhat
58:40
similar model but it’s it’s it’s a
58:42
handful to a dozen
58:44
and we had one we had one person who
58:47
who came up with an idea possible idea
58:50
for it for a new a new venture if you
58:52
want to get into it asking
58:54
if you’ve thought of getting into
58:55
cannabis uh farming and production and
58:58
distribution
58:59
uh to to feed the the growing in
59:01
california there’s recreational cannabis
59:03
but also medicinal and recreational
59:05
candidates in other states has there
59:06
been any any consideration about that
59:10
uh we do have a proposal that one
59:12
person’s uh provided because the
59:13
facilities we have actually in
59:15
processing that
59:16
have a similar uh similar equipment than
59:19
we have for processing tomatoes
59:21
making tomato paste so he’s uh he’s got
59:24
a proposal floated out there for uh
59:26
for doing just that but basically
59:28
processing him
59:31
okay because that’s used for other
59:33
products in addition to the cannabis
59:36
field right well and hemp you can sell
59:39
all 50 states federally with no problem
59:41
and all of that
59:41
plus cbd products and and things like
59:44
that this is
59:45
i mean chris i i could talk to you for
59:47
like five more hours about this
59:49
uh but i respect your time and i i think
59:51
uh that this is uh i i just think this
59:54
is fantastic
59:55
i want to thank you so much for coming
59:56
on the show before i let you go
59:58
i want to give you a chance to say
60:00
anything you felt like
60:01
we did we didn’t get it we didn’t get a
60:03
chance to talk about or i didn’t get to
60:04
ask you about
60:05
uh and uh really just give you the floor
60:08
um
60:08
and uh promote anything you want to
60:10
promote anything that you want to say as
60:11
much time as you want
60:12
chris roofer the floor is yours
60:17
i appreciate the opportunity here so
60:19
there’s there’s more to talk about for
60:20
sure about how we do things and how we
60:22
actually
60:22
execute on things but it’s not the cast
60:24
meow so it’s not perfect because
60:26
you’re dealing with people and the
60:28
biggest problem i have
60:30
frankly and i probably noticed that back
60:32
in college i mean i said
60:34
i you know i guess i was a medium hair
60:37
radical you know not the longer i had a
60:39
radical because i was in the 60s and 70s
60:41
in college
60:43
but uh uh i was wondering i always
60:46
wondered
60:46
why are people induced as i am about
60:49
such
60:50
such a product uh program and whatnot
60:53
and the same thing with the company i
60:55
guess i i want people to be free and
60:57
open but
60:58
i’m uh i wish more people did take
61:01
advantage of the freedom
61:03
and the opportunities they have with
61:04
this model
61:06
the biggest problem i have and most
61:08
people recognize it
61:10
is people holding other people
61:12
accountable
61:13
you know free out there in the in a
61:15
capitalist society
61:17
you can say well i didn’t get that
61:18
service in that restaurant i’m not going
61:20
back
61:20
typically people will not complain they
61:22
just won’t go back
61:24
to that restaurant or or whether service
61:26
uh
61:27
their their facility were going to so
61:29
when you’re in an enterprise where
61:31
you’re actually
61:31
dealing with other human beings it’s
61:34
tough to hold others accountable
61:36
and so our clue you’re you’ve got a
61:38
official understanding with somebody
61:40
that they’re going to do x and timing
61:41
about it
61:42
it’s hard for people to hold others
61:44
accountable there it’s called the
61:46
difficulties
61:47
difficult conversation and that’s tough
61:50
so that that’s probably why we have
61:53
managers and why it’s evolved like that
61:54
because
61:55
you know you’re used to mommy and daddy
61:57
growing up and they’re
61:58
used to the to the priests of the at the
62:00
at the uh the church with the authority
62:02
and the pyramid and you go to business
62:04
and there’s managers typically
62:06
and you know the military there’s
62:08
managers so as people grow up there’s
62:10
always that school teacher there’s
62:12
an authority figure there that person
62:14
they’re telling you what to do
62:15
and so we’ve grown in this culture that
62:18
there’s somebody else that i can if i
62:20
have a problem that i’m not comfortable
62:21
addressing directly
62:23
i can go to mommy i can go plane to
62:25
mommy
62:26
of course a mommy won’t let’s not
62:27
complain to that and
62:29
so that’s our culture so getting an
62:32
environment
62:33
wow i’m responsible here for everything
62:36
and i’m responsible for making things
62:38
happen they’re very comfortable with
62:39
doing their own work
62:41
and getting their own work done but not
62:43
but when they have to count on other
62:44
people and other people don’t perform
62:47
i i yeah i’m going to look back
62:50
they’re not going to like me so all that
62:52
social
62:53
issue comes about that’s the toughest
62:56
issue we have
62:58
and forever libertarian society
63:01
you really need to have people who are
63:03
who have self-confidence
63:05
i mean they’re they they’re not just
63:06
relying on themselves yes they’re
63:08
individuals but they’re right
63:09
individualism is such a frankly yourself
63:12
as no it’s more your family your friends
63:14
it’s really taking care of your local
63:15
folks
63:16
at a minimum we’re going to do it
63:18
ourselves and it’s we it’s not just
63:20
i give me a break i can’t take care of
63:22
much of anything
63:23
i can’t grow my own food and make my own
63:26
clothes
63:26
so no it’s all about it’s a good
63:28
community but i am taking
63:29
responsibility for my life my family my
63:32
friends
63:33
so we need that kind of sense of
63:35
self-esteem
63:36
and self-respect to have a a society
63:40
that’s productive
63:41
without these managers telling us what
63:42
to do or the bureaucrats tell us what to
63:44
do
63:45
so that’s the big crux we need to
63:46
accomplish here as a as a culture which
63:48
may take
63:49
hundreds more years if we last that long
63:51
thousands more years i don’t know you go
63:53
back to the greeks 2 000 years ago they
63:54
had a democracy right
63:55
and now we got one and whether it’s
63:57
falling apart or going
63:58
downhill or uphill we don’t know we’ll
64:00
find out another few hundred years when
64:02
they write the history books
64:04
right it could take another hundreds of
64:05
years a thousand years before you really
64:06
have a society
64:08
of people of self-confidence and human
64:10
respect
64:12
you truly respect other people’s bodies
64:14
and their property
64:15
that’s that’s a society that’s going to
64:18
be great
64:19
why in religion do we have so much
64:21
frankly
64:22
perfect peace what i mean by that yes we
64:25
have some people going into churches and
64:27
killing people
64:27
but not for religious reasons
64:29
particularly
64:30
we don’t have we don’t have catholics
64:33
pulling guns out
64:34
and pointing them out at jewish people
64:36
and saying you got to come
64:37
to uh to our catholic church and adopt
64:40
our
64:41
uh catholicism we don’t have that
64:44
we haven’t got people pulling guns out
64:46
you’ve got to come in a pizza hut you
64:47
can’t go down the road to domino’s
64:50
so we have a respect for people so we
64:52
have so many different religions in this
64:54
country
64:55
and they’re very heartfelt beliefs but
64:57
beliefs but we have
64:58
perfect peace why because we
65:01
respect each other’s person and our
65:04
property
65:05
as long as that’s the core of what we do
65:07
in society
65:08
we have a peaceful productive society i
65:11
had to look it up a few because i use an
65:12
example all the time he looked up a year
65:13
two ago there’s like 135 official
65:15
religions in america
65:18
but no guns yeah so not only do we have
65:21
peace but everybody gets what they want
65:23
which is the same in the commercial
65:25
world where you get all these pizzas
65:27
different kinds of pieces different
65:29
kinds of stores different kinds of
65:30
clothes
65:30
so people generally get what they want
65:33
and it’s peaceful
65:35
so that’s that the core of what we want
65:36
as a society and
65:38
inside of business and inside our
65:40
country politically is you know
65:42
respecting other people respecting their
65:44
property
65:45
and their person so that’s uh and that’s
65:48
we promote within the company
65:50
and uh so i’ve enjoyed it we’re working
65:52
still very hard on how to perfect
65:54
uh self-management in the company but
65:56
it’s not the perfect thing that’s
65:58
that’s it’s all hunky-dory because
66:00
you’ve got that personal aspect of human
66:02
beings and how they act and
66:05
people are generally territorial they
66:07
generally like to
66:08
see what they want what they enjoy and
66:11
so we still have the
66:12
people in the company there’s people in
66:14
the enterprise so we formally organize
66:16
it like this and it does work
66:17
like this and i think it has substantial
66:20
benefits
66:21
but it’s not perfect but
66:24
i enjoy it and we’re keeping going at it
66:26
so appreciate the opportunity
66:28
absolutely and so like you said a lot of
66:30
this is cultural and it’s a matter of it
66:33
starts with
66:34
and really it starts with as children
66:36
not teaching someone do this because i
66:38
told you to
66:39
explain to the child why this thing is
66:42
and then give them
66:43
choices and consequences as a result of
66:45
it so that as they grow instead of just
66:47
thinking oh i have to listen to this
66:48
person because they’re bigger than me
66:49
and they’re in a position of authority
66:51
over me
66:51
instead i should listen to what they’re
66:53
saying or i should do this thing because
66:55
it’s the right thing to do
66:57
then now when they’re working for chris
66:59
or they have their own company or
67:00
they’re working for someone else
67:01
they have a level of accountability in
67:03
all things that they do because it’s not
67:05
based on a presumption of authority of
67:06
someone else
67:07
or a fear of someone you know coming and
67:09
slapping them on the wrist or putting
67:10
them in a cage or
67:11
you know shooting them or whatever it’s
67:13
because it’s the right thing to do when
67:14
they have an autonomy and responsibility
67:17
over how
67:17
they do things and they respect others i
67:19
think this is absolutely fascinating and
67:22
and
67:22
i i am so happy to have had you on chris
67:26
thank you so much for joining us tonight
67:28
all right thanks much bye
67:30
take care you too so uh and if you can
67:32
stick around during i’m gonna talk with
67:34
you during the outro
67:35
folks thanks so much uh for joining us
67:37
for this really really groundbreaking
67:39
episode
67:40
of my fellow americans uh we will see
67:43
you
67:43
uh next week uh on wednesday i
67:46
i can’t oh my guest is i can’t remember
67:49
the name of my guest but you’re gonna be
67:50
fascinated by i know it’s a uh
67:53
no that’s next week i can’t remember who
67:55
my guest is next week but you’re gonna
67:56
love it stay tuned uh next tuesday at 8
67:58
p.m
67:59
for the muddy waters of freedom where
68:00
matt wright and i parse through the
68:01
week’s events like the wonder boys that
68:03
we are and then join me
68:04
right back here wednesday at 8 same
68:07
spike place
68:08
same spike time for the next episode of
68:10
my fellow americans
68:11
i’m spike cohen and you are the power
68:15
god bless guys
68:31
[Music]
68:36
yay
68:39
[Music]
68:59
[Music]
69:01
[Applause]
69:04
you can’t
69:06
[Music]
69:14
in reality you are my kin though i view
69:17
the world to
69:19
if you another in my kicks it might fit
69:22
we might just
69:23
unite and come together become hybrid
69:26
at the least slightly like-minded indeed
69:29
the life i’ve lived brings light to
69:31
kindness
69:32
all you need is a sign put a cease to
69:35
the crimes
69:36
for the east of the minds like mine
69:38
sometimes
69:39
darkness is all i find you know what
69:41
they say about an eye for a night in a
69:42
time when the blood is the blood who am
69:44
i to deny with cry when a loved one dies
69:46
i recognize
69:58
mother father brother
70:18
[Music]
70:25
tell me why
70:37
[Music]
70:47
[Music]
70:56
we will make the change
71:17
[Music]
71:25
you