Latest / Calm Under Fire / Gary Bender

Transcript

Gary Bender · Calm Under Fire

• Col. John Boggs: Welcome back to Calm Under Fire. I'm Colonel John Boggs, the president of Fortitude Consulting, and we are an executive leadership development and coaching firm. And today I am joined by Gary Bender, a seasoned C-level executive, founder and advisor with decades of experience across finance, operations, energy, and business transformation. And what I'm hearing today is even more than that, but I'll let him talk about that. Gary has built and scaled companies, led turnarounds, and now focuses on helping organizations drive performance through better systems, better decisions, and better leadership. Gary, I couldn't be more happy to have you here today. I mean, absolutely proud to have you here today. Gary Bender: John, I'm glad to be here. Glad to join your group. It's an honor. Col. John Boggs: Well, thank you, sir. Thank you very much. I've got my first question all geared up for you, but I would love for you to just very briefly talk real quick about, because you've got that emblem on your chest, and that emblem is very important. And I want people to understand how important that is. Can you talk about the folds of honor? Gary Bender: Certainly can, Folds of Honor is an 18 year old charity designed to educate the legacy of our fallen heroes and first responders by educating their widows or children. Because education is the key to success, we all know that. And so Folds of Honor was started and I went to a golf outing a few years ago, got excited about it. Volunteered and three days later I was on the board of directors for the Pennsylvania chapter. That chapter's now expanded to be four states and my job is director of sponsors and partners to find like-minded patriots, companies, foundations to support our goal financially and evangelize the message. Col. John Boggs: And Gary, you're wearing red today and I know that's significant today. Can you tell us about that? Gary Bender: It is. We've got about 25,000 of us in the country would like to say we're patriots that we declared this 20 years ago, R.E.D. Friday, Red Friday, say a prayer for everyone deployed. So you'll, when you see a red shirt on a Friday and just ask them if they're recognizing Red Friday. Col. John Boggs: Gary, I couldn't be more proud of you. Having been a guy that's deployed quite a bit in my life, Gary Bender: Sure, yeah. Col. John Boggs: I am very proud of you and very proud of your organization. Thank you, sir. Thank you very much. Gary Bender: It's not hard to do the right thing, John. It is not hard. Col. John Boggs: Well, Gary, back to the reason we're here. I mean, Gary Bender: Okay. Col. John Boggs: you give me goosebumps, brother, I'm telling you. But okay, Gary, you spent your career building and fixing businesses. Why do so many organizations struggle to execute what they already know they should be doing? Gary Bender: Okay, John, I'll argue first point. They don't know what they're doing on a great day The CFO has 50 % of a plan which isn't bad. He's got the rest of the team to help him The problem is I'll bet you whatever whatever you want to bet that 50 % of the people reporting to see if CEO do not know the plan on a good day They're trying to manage their vertical their silo. They're trying to manage Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Gary Bender: sales without talking to marketing We're trying to manage production without talking to finance about inventory or something else. People are stuck in their silos because A, the CEO is not communicating well enough. And then they usually complicate it by some back-ass words compensation scheme that forces them to try to be excellent in their silo and not drive the bigger picture, the broader success to key drivers. It is that simple, John. Honest to God. Col. John Boggs: Wow. They're silos, not communicate. Holy smokes. Well, you've operated at the intersection of finance, operations, and strategy. Gary Bender: Mm-hmm. Col. John Boggs: What does effective leadership look like when all three have to work together? Gary Bender: Oh my God, it's magic. It's not even work. If Col. John Boggs: Ahem. Gary Bender: you're all working together and communicating, I work 12, 14 hour days without knowing it when things are going right. I'm miserable after six when things aren't going right. When Col. John Boggs: Mm. Mm-hmm. Gary Bender: there's magic, when you're growing a company, I've grown a company from 25 million to 900 million in four years. Seven employees to 900 in four years. And my kids never heard me say I'm going to work. Never ever heard me say going to work. Work is when it doesn't work. Col. John Boggs: Work is when it doesn't work. Gary Bender: huh. Col. John Boggs: Okay, tell me more about that. Gary Bender: Success is a six-letter word. It works a four-letter word. It shouldn't be that hard. Leaders should Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Gary Bender: lead. People should manage. Employees should know what's expected of them and follow and know what's expected in front of and behind them in the process. If your job is to put a wheel nut on, you better know where the nuts are and you better know the guy on the assembly line wants a wheel ready to put a tire on or whatever the step is. People have to know where they fit and why. It's not that hard. is lateral thinking not vertical thinking. Col. John Boggs: Okay, many leaders talk about strategy, Gary, but fewer deliver results. What separates the two? Gary Bender: I'll give you Gary's definition of leadership versus management. Leadership is doing the right thing. Management is doing things right. So strategy is why are we doing this? What are the drivers that are doing this? Why is it critical to the market, competitors, technology, risks? That's strategy. Very few leaders can explain that across the organization. So an employee, a blender, insurance carrier, whoever you need to talk to, your strategy should be so clear and so logical and then they should know where they fit in and they should ask you how can I help you drive success. If you don't get the message right, you don't get the execution right. Col. John Boggs: Gary, I'm going to stick with that for one second. I have personally worked with a number of companies that... Well, for lack of a better word, they just didn't have a strategy. Gary Bender: How did that work out? Col. John Boggs: it doesn't. It doesn't work at all. Gary Bender: How did combat work without a battle plan and 10 contingency plans? Col. John Boggs: You're not going to last long. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But yet companies will... Gary Bender: No, unfortunately, that's right. Yeah, yeah. I've studied a lot of military stuff. I've read history books. We're prone to repeat the mistakes every man in mankind made ahead of us unless we think through it ahead of time. We are not any smarter than the cavemen, frankly. Okay, we just have better tools. So we have to learn from mistakes. You have a business plan, you have a battle plan, you better have a whole lot of contingency plans and a great risk analysis because it's all going to happen. Col. John Boggs: Well, a lot of companies like to build strategies and then they put them in these nice leather bound things and stick them up on Gary Bender: Yeah. Col. John Boggs: the shelf and I don't believe they ever come off. Gary Bender: a five-year strategic plan. Give me a 90-day success survival plan. Col. John Boggs: Ha ha. Gary Bender: How long can you hold your breath? Col. John Boggs: my God. my God. Okay. Well, hey, your reputation is amazing, getting a lot done in a short period of time, what allows a leader to move fast without breaking things? Gary Bender: You got to break things. You got to break Col. John Boggs: You gotta break. Gary Bender: things. know, Hall of Fame, 300, 70 % strikeouts, ground outs, right? Okay, you Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Gary Bender: got to break things. There's too many people out there looking for perfection, looking for 100 page strategy analysis, financial analysis, whatever. Yeah, look at the strategic drivers and get those right. And be prepared to break things, be prepared to react. And don't punish people when they break little things. Encourage experimentation. Don't break the big things. Move quickly. Speed does not kill in business. Speed succeeds. Col. John Boggs: Speed succeeds. Okay. Okay. Gary Bender: I'll give you one of my favorite sayings. is not my favorite. People looked at me and said, how do you get so much done every day? And I said, it's real easy. I have a will do list and a to do list. Everything on my will do list gets done every day before my head hits the pillow. If I make a commitment, if I have a commitment internally of what I have to do today to get there tomorrow, Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Gary Bender: my will do list gets done every day. And if it's beyond my control. And I owe you something, Colonel John. You know yesterday that I've got a delay. Here's where I'm at. I need another day or two, John. Not making an excuse. I'm just telling you where we stand. No surprises. But that's the... Everything on my will-do list gets addressed every day. And 80 % of them get done every day. And there's nothing mission critical that didn't get done. Because what was mission critical was done two days ago, Right. Col. John Boggs: Yeah, yeah, that's mission critical. It gets done. It gets done. Gary Bender: Yeah. You know where the term deadline came from the military. Don't screw up. Bad things happen. Yeah, don't screw up. Col. John Boggs: Screw up. Gary Bender: Get your stuff done. Col. John Boggs: Okay. Well, you in the, you said break things. In the military, you know, you like to fail, but you like to fail fast and you like to fail a lot. Now that sounds actually probably counterintuitive to a number of folks. Gary Bender: Tell me about the second half. half I don't... Col. John Boggs: You you gotta fail a lot. You gotta know what doesn't work. You gotta Gary Bender: Fair enough. Col. John Boggs: know what doesn't work. You gotta know real quick what doesn't work, and then you gotta change it. You gotta... Gary Bender: Well, when you started with 18 year old, for the most case, young men going into combat. So your failure rate was in training had to be very high. Col. John Boggs: Yes, in training, in training. You want it to be high in training. Gary Bender: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Col. John Boggs: For real, you want everything to work like a charm. You want it to work. Gary Bender: Yep. Yep. Col. John Boggs: You just don't want to find out, that doesn't work. No, that can be very costly. And in that line of work, you don't want costly. Gary Bender: Yep, well it's, you've got billion dollar companies out there making mistakes every day. and we just make them, we never hit about it Col. John Boggs: Okay, billion dollar coins, making mistakes every day. Gary Bender: because they die. When the startup makes a mistake, they're dead in 30 days, 90 days. Col. John Boggs: Yeah, my gosh. Gary Bender: Yeah. Col. John Boggs: One of the things I've always noted was when people have to make decisions, they'd rather go to the restroom, go to the head and get sick rather than make a decision. There's always, need more information, I need more, I need more, I need more. So when information is incomplete, and it very often is, how do Gary Bender: always is. Col. John Boggs: you make sound decisions? Gary Bender: Look at the drivers in the marketplace. Look at what the customer is asking for. Look at what competitors are offering. And when you're sure you're meeting that gap, go execute. We all work for the customer. I don't work for the CEO. We all work for the customer. I don't work for the shareholder. End of the day, I work for Col. John Boggs: All right. Gary Bender: the customer. I've always said, Col. John Boggs: Orkman. Gary Bender: I work 60 to 70 hours a week since I'm 11 years old, between school and work, college and work and everything else. I've worked 60 to 70 hours a week. I've always said, I can find a job this bad anywhere. I had no fear of failure. I had nothing to lose. Col. John Boggs: love that. No fear of failure. Gary Bender: Confidence comes across as arrogance. I apologize all the time. It's fine one. It's a fine line of arrogance, confidence and cockiness and everything else. But go talk to Muhammad Ali. Go talk to Tom Brady. Go talk to Tiger Woods on a good day, right? Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Gary Bender: Confidence comes across. Everybody thinks they're arrogant. Col. John Boggs: Gary, you're big on systems thinking. You've built platforms like the CFO solution focused on best practices. Why do organizations fail to adopt best practices when they're available? Gary Bender: Well, you get what you plant. Okay. So again, if you organize down a function and you Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Gary Bender: have people trained to report up a function and work up a function and not understand their customer. So everybody in business has a customer. Finance, might be Wall Street, it might be the CEO, it might be the board of directors. Sales has a customer, but an internal customer. Most people don't know what their customers need and want, when and why. So first thing is that when you organize vertically and you never explain why what you're doing is important and then by the way, to the person who supports your function, why their job is important. So a salesman could be a very, crucial, is a very crucial part of the company. But Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Gary Bender: if the person doing the purchase, doing the... entry of the contract into the system so that customer ultimately gets supplied in 30 or 90 days, that person has to understand getting the order right is mission critical. That's just as critical as getting the order, is getting the order processed and invoiced correctly internally. They think they've Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Gary Bender: got a crappy clerical job. They don't know how they fit into the system. But you asked about best practices. So pick any job and you can do this from the military and just let me know if the same thought process correlates. You interview somebody, you've got a job description. You hire them and you train them for task after task of whatever they're doing. Okay? Col. John Boggs: right? Gary Bender: I come out of finance as a backbone, so I kind of understand the basics of get the numbers right, get the invoice right, get the accounting right. it's a monkey can, hell, AI does it now. So I used to say a monkey can do it. AI is even better than the monkeys. Anyway, but the bottom line is you hire the clerk, the accountant, the whoever, and you show them the tasks, what to do. And then Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Gary Bender: because we're all human, You put controls around it because people break the rules, behind, take a shortcut. So you start with a job description and you train to that task level and you kind of let them know, here's what complete is, here's what accurate is. You don't tell them why. And then because they're going to screw up humanly, you put controls in place. And then you think you're done training that accountant or that clerk or that engineer or whatever you want to pick to assembly line worker. You put the controls in when the training breaks down. The communication breaks down. And then if you're really feeling big about yourself, you say, that person does it better than that person. So John's way of doing it, that's going to be our best practice. Okay. Everything's good until John changes jobs. Everything's good until John starts taking shortcuts or we put a new ERP system in and John's best practice falls apart. But really, really good companies have 80 Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Gary Bender: % of their tasks. at least a best practice supports them. You know, so when you're training somebody, go sit with John, watch John do it. You know, shadow John, he's the best practice for inventory accounting or for sales accounting or whatever. Okay. And Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Gary Bender: that's great. Most companies don't have that. Okay. But now you get to the point where if you want to drive it across the organization, for every good reason, Cross-training, understanding the strategy, communication, accountability, all the things you want to have, the only way you get it done is with process. So where best practices go vertical in a job, in a task, process goes horizontally. So process threads across everything that's done in a company. Process is the DNA of the company. You can't have a good culture if you don't have a good process. The favorite saying is culture trumps strategy. Yeah. If you don't have a process, you can't sustain a culture. And very few Col. John Boggs: Wow. Gary Bender: people understand business process, management, functionality, compensation, accountability. Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Gary Bender: Just they don't teach it. They don't teach it. Col. John Boggs: They don't know, they don't teach it. So how should, well, if they don't teach it, then how do you learn it? I mean, is it all on the job? Gary Bender: I was fortunate to have a problem from hell in 1989 and I actually had to change the entire financial system in a $7 billion company with about 700 subsidiaries and 700 guys who thought they were kings. Okay, so Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Gary Bender: a little bit of political resistance, you know. Somewhere between process improvement and insurrection John just so you appreciate why they put me in charge of it Okay, because if you're break eggs, I broke them all and bottom line is I got to learn business process because there was a guy at Harvard Michael Hammer who was breaking eggs at Harvard to say we're teaching Pardon me. We're teaching shit wrong in the NBA school. That's highly renowned We're teaching vertically Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Gary Bender: and we should be teaching horizontally and dr. Hammer Mike Hammer basically started to write the book, The Harvard Business Review, articles on process. And I became a dilettante of Hammer. I know one 100th of what that guy knows. And process became pretty popular in the 90s and nobody, no business school teaches it to speak of. Yeah, it's radically simple. Radically simple. Col. John Boggs: How should a leader think about building systems that last, that outlast them? Gary Bender: Well, for absolutely outlast them. Okay, she's sure the interest if you don't have it, it's not you're not gonna last long It's almost a self-fulfilling push push the stick forward. Let me know how soon you hit the earth. Okay Col. John Boggs: Ha ha ha! Gary Bender: Hold your breath is it not gonna be long, but they're gonna find out you don't know what you're doing The systems won't work if you don't have that broad view. I'll come back to Understand the customer, understand the market, understand technology, and figure out where you fit. And that's the CEO's job. If he can't do that, he doesn't need a massive vice presidents to tell him where this company fits in the marketplace. know, marketing Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Gary Bender: can help him understand technology, can help him understand technology developments and interesting stuff in the marketplace, good or bad. Okay, but at the of the day, the CEO has to figure that out. It's not the board. It's the CEO. Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Gary Bender: And you need to have pretty broad vision. You need to challenge a few things. I think you need to read incredibly. Too many CEOs spend 40, 50 hours a week in the office not talking to customers, not looking at the market, not out talking to suppliers or potential customers. You have to look outside to drive the company. Col. John Boggs: I have to look outside. Gary Bender: and just read up to stuff. Just talk to crazy smart people that don't know your business. Col. John Boggs: that don't know your business. Gary Bender: No, I want to what's going on in the world. I don't want to know what my competitors, don't, don't recruit from my competitors. That's definition of insanity. I recruit really smart people. That'll tell me I'm wrong. They tell me I've got a blind spot to tell me I'm missing something. I'm fine with that. Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Gary Bender: Hell, my wife tells me all the time, those will listen here. My Col. John Boggs: You Gary Bender: kids too. So that's okay. Col. John Boggs: Yeah, well, all that free vice you get, my. Gary Bender: You better not have an ego. If you do, it's going to show up. All kidding aside, it's the person who doesn't want to hear bad news. It starts at the top. Col. John Boggs: Gosh, Gary, what do do about that? I've run across that too many times in my work. Gary Bender: You have a really tight chain of command. I couldn't do your job, okay? I'd have to have Col. John Boggs: Mm. Gary Bender: my voice box cut out and my eyes stapled so they didn't roll all the time. I talk to people one-on-one. Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Gary Bender: I literally get, I learn their function. What can I do to help your function? What do you need? Frequently, excuse me. It's the info they don't have the information to do their job. They don't have the external information or the internal information. Again, I've been a CFO that kind of role for, I don't know, 40 years. Okay. And it always came down to get the right information, get the information people need to them quickly, as accurately as you can, and don't wait for it to be precisely accurate. I always kid people, you know, most people you think you close the books every month. I said, we close it once a year, the first 11 times rehearsals. Let's get it closed. Closed by the fourth or fifth workday so people have the information they need. I my whole point was people should get information every day on how the business is running so they're not surprised at the end of the month and another two weeks to see how we did. If you don't know how your department did or your whatever did every day of the month, you shouldn't be in that job. you do not have your finger in the pulse. That's where key performance indicators are not historical tablets. They're dynamic pulse points. You need to know what drives your business. You don't wait for accounting records. KPI is your smartwatch with the blood pressure monitor. When it beeps, damn it, do something. Get sugar, get water, do something. Col. John Boggs: Yeah. Gary Bender: KPI will be your obituary if you use the accounting records. Col. John Boggs: my, my. Well, Gary, now you talk to me about turnarounds and you've led growth, you've led and turnarounds and what's the first thing you're looking for when a business is under. Gary Bender: That's a great question. mean, the short answer is what's my cash pile and how long can I survive till I figure this out and fix it? So from my standpoint, it's like, not how did we get here? Because a lot of times I parachute in as a fixer. So I'm like brand new to the company. And it's like, Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Gary Bender: you know, pick whatever word you want to use. But it's like, Yeah, I know we're in trouble. We're in workout with the banks. You just missed a payroll or a debt payment. So the first thing is all about cash. From my simple mind is I've got to know if we have enough to survive 30, 60, 90 days. And the answer is going to be no. So how do I raise cash? How do I get immediate relief? But that's Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Gary Bender: number one is survival on a turnaround. then and that's literally the first week on the job. If you don't have it figured out after the first week, you're out of luck. Col. John Boggs: Wow. Gary Bender: Yeah, and then we have 30 days to figure out how to fix it and execute by 90. It's such a short-term look. It's insane. Col. John Boggs: Okay, what? Gary Bender: And just top of my head is, first of all, make sure everybody knows the deck is on fire. We're not planning a sales conference. We're not planning a mark, an advertising campaign or next year's catalog. I know there's a Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Gary Bender: nine month lead time to put a catalog or an ERP update roll out. you kidding guys? The back half of the boat's on fire and that's where the gasoline stored. So we might want to put the fire out on the deck. Col. John Boggs: Mmm. Gary Bender: or nothing else. Helmet and life preserver would be a really good idea. Because I'm a big believer in safety and people know what to do when this stuff hits the fan. The battle stations and safety. Col. John Boggs: So, yeah, my gosh. So what leadership behaviors accelerate recovery? I mean, rather than slowing it down, what accelerates it? I mean, where does the good leadership show up? Gary Bender: absolute clear communication. Do not hide any facts. If the deck's really on fire, you got to tell people, are you guys in the back of the boat down on the second deck? Get the hell out of there. Okay, here's the problem. Your job just changed. It is real. It is real. We're Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Gary Bender: an hour from abandoning ship, so I'm not worried about cooking dinner and peeling potatoes for the dinner shift. Guys, I'll just use a Navy analogy. It's like, Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Gary Bender: Everything just changed. You're battle stations. Here's what's changed. Obviously, we're not spending money we don't have. Obviously, we're in short term. And people have to hear that three or four times. They don't get it. But you have to explain it to them. This is reality. If it's a technology issue, if the competitor is eating our lunch, if tariffs are eating our lunch, hey, we didn't do this. Tariffs happened or straights of hormones just happened and we can't get our raw materials. What do do? Those conversations have been going on for the last two weeks around the world. And say, what do do? And certain parts of the world are almost out of certain raw materials coming out of the Straits of Hormuz. Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Gary Bender: So gee, you should have thought of that with strategic inventory and all the beating of the drums that have been going on the last couple of years. Just in time doesn't work for something that's only supplied through the Straits of Hormuz. Col. John Boggs: Wow. Okay, so what does that say about thinking ahead? What does that say about thinking ahead, Gary? Gary Bender: You said earlier that I've sat at the intersection of, I think you said finance operations and strategy. I would say as a CFO, I've sat at the intersection of risk, resources and results. And I always start with risk. I can beg or stretch resources. I can't change risk. I'm paranoid. Okay, risk scares the hell out of me. So I've got action plans, contingency plans. got, I'm always talking to people about what could go wrong in your marketplace. We're fine. What could go wrong with your customers? What if you sold specialty tires for Chrysler and they only used them in their 6,000 pound EV vehicles? Yeah, we built a point, good story last week. Somebody built a million square foot factory to supply parts to EVs. One major auto parts company. What do I do with a million square foot factory next to the EV plant that Chrysler just shut down? It's a $700 million building with all the robotics in it. It can't be redeployed. Nobody's buying Chrysler's plant to make EVs. yeah, Chrysler's got a problem. They got a lot of money. I got a $700 Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Gary Bender: million mortgage on a company and a thousand employees in there. And all of sudden you're surprised when Chrysler stops ordering parts for their EV product line. I would never get in, pardon the term, I would never get in bed with somebody for a $700 million building. I'd rather have three or four factories scattered around the country shipping parts halfway across the country than totally align with some customer's product strategy. And I'd probably Col. John Boggs: Wow. Gary Bender: outsource half of it for the first five years because I'm paranoid. I'd rather take the hit on margin by having some other Col. John Boggs: And... Gary Bender: supplier share my risk. But again, I'm paranoid, Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Well, it sounds like that paranoia is a good thing to have. my. Yeah, it does that. It will do that. Gary Bender: It keeps you alive, keeps you thinking. Yeah. Col. John Boggs: It will do that. So tell me more about partnerships, how do you, about you built networks and partnerships. So how important is it? Would you surround yourself? How important is it for a leader to surround himself with partners and those networks? Gary Bender: Well, personally, any success I've had is due to partnerships. And my saying is, whether it's what I wear on my chest or how I do my life and do my business, give and then get. Give first. If I can help you, I Col. John Boggs: Give an end yet. Gary Bender: will. If I can help somebody find a job, if I can help their kid find a job, if I can help somebody find another supplier or another lender, give, give, give, because it'll come back tenfold. But I learned. 30 years ago to build relationships. And it was really easy. I built relationships with people who were smarter than me. So I outgave them, but I learned from them. And so many CEOs are so insular they do not have networks. They think they're golf buddies, the guy at the club, whoever is a network. They don't. Col. John Boggs: That's not a network. Gary Bender: No, not a network. But keto network, think the keto network has been really, really unselfish on any way you can help somebody. Even if it's just listening. Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Gary Bender: Yeah. I get calls almost every day from people on my network and it's usually availed. I need some help on this. I have guys that will call me at 10 o'clock at night and they need help on this. It's like really clear. I just looked in the mirror and from the bridge the freaking boats on fire. And we've literally been up till midnight to get him help at 8 o'clock in the morning. Col. John Boggs: Wow. Gary Bender: But those are friends who would do the same for me. Col. John Boggs: Yes. Gary Bender: And I pick my friends carefully. They've got to be decisive, they've got to be respectful, they've got to be Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Gary Bender: people I like to see. like to trust and socialize as well as do business with. So go small circle of friends. Huge network, small circle of friends. Col. John Boggs: Wow, and you're a small circle. wow, I love that small circle of friends. And you just led me right into calm under fire. being calm, staying calm when the pressure is up, how do you do that? I mean, can you tell us about a time when you had to stay calm because the pressure was high, the stakes were high, the stakes were real? Gary Bender: Well, you know, there's a country over there we're having trouble with right now named Iran, right? So I was 27 years old and I was the finance guy for about half the world in licensing and distribution agreements and the Iranian government and agency owed me $47 million. And when I was in Tehran two weeks before they seized our embassy, having a meeting in our embassy, with the lying Iranian agency that owed me $47 million. Okay. And I literally had just left, left Europe coming back to the States when I heard about the embassy and good accounting rules. When you go to war, any publicly traded company writes off all that debt. So I had to trot in as a 27 year old youngster and trot into the CFO of a mega billion dollar company and inform him of a 47 million dollar write-off and Ironically none of that money was passed due. So it wasn't like we screwed up. They were in terms. They bought a lot from us Okay, so I had a 47 million dollar write-off bottom line is I had to come up with a way to to to minimize that and I ultimately wound up recovering that 47 million dollars So pretty unique solution. Leaned on a couple of really smart people and executed and recovered $47 million. And frankly, no other US corporation was able to do that. where GM was owed $600 million and IBM owned $500-600 million, Caterpillar and everybody else was owed money, we got our $47 million. But I grew up in a hurry. Col. John Boggs: Wow, that's it. Gary Bender: Yeah, never lost my temper, never raised my voice, never F bombed this and that, never didn't call Washington for help. had their own hands full. So no sense calling the embassy. Col. John Boggs: It's human. Gary Bender: It's like, you know, we've got how many people were held hostage for 450 days, whatever the numbers were. State Department wasn't going to help me. I had a $47 million problem. I was like, 100th on the list of companies that got whacked. and most of it turned into not only accounting losses with Wall Street. Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Gary Bender: And when the whole world takes a crap, Wall Street doesn't really beat you up. Well, Col. John Boggs: Thank Gary Bender: we recovered the $47 million we never told Wall Street. No. I'll tell you secrets. Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Gary Bender: In a whole scheme of things, it wasn't enough money to change the company. It wasn't going to affect Wall Street. Why tell everybody else? Col. John Boggs: okay. Okay. Gary Bender: Yeah, but that was, I don't know, I've had better days than that. I've had other problems when things hit the fan, but I don't raise my voice, don't throw stuff. Sometimes I'll take a walk. I've been known to take a walk, know, that literally they thought I quit. I was going that long. Came back, had an answer. I'll tell you a funny story. Col. John Boggs: Yeah. Holy s***. Gary Bender: I worked at a place with a 300 acre campus. chain link fences, all the security, the drive through gates. I Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Gary Bender: took a walk at three o'clock and it was an issue. It was in the fast growth business, it was an issue and Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Gary Bender: I didn't have the answer and I really didn't want anybody calling me because other people in the company heard about it the same instant I did. So I took a walk and this was before cell phones, that's how long ago it was. And Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Gary Bender: so I took a walk and I walked out the gate. because there was a shopping center across the street. Walked across the road. The shopping center came walking back and the gates were locked. Col. John Boggs: wow. You were gone for a while. Gary Bender: I took a long walk. I was gone for two and a half hours. Came back after six and said, well, my car's about a quarter mile away. The guards are gone home. And I could call security if there was a phone on the outside of the gate. And if Col. John Boggs: Ugh. Gary Bender: one of those things were, you know, there were still pay phones across the street, I didn't have any change with me. walked over to one of the restaurant, I need to use your phone. But why? Col. John Boggs: huh. Gary Bender: I locked myself out of your car. said, no, of my company. The gates locked. So next time, won't take a walk that far or that long. But I came back and Col. John Boggs: Wow. Gary Bender: had it figured out. And the irony was I walked up to the corporate CFO and said, here's the problem. Here's my assessment. Here's what I plan to do. said, how'd come up with this? I took a walk. He said, I'm trying to call you. I yeah, I took a walk. Col. John Boggs: you Gary Bender: And you didn't worry. What did you think? The question was, did you quit? No, no, I'm not going to quit. Col. John Boggs: Wow, well, you just said some pretty important things there. Well, you didn't quit that Gary Bender: I didn't realize it. ahead. What was it? was it? I don't quit. No, no. Col. John Boggs: and you told the boss about a problem, but you also gave him a solution. Gary Bender: Well, I told him what I told him what the key points were and I told him what I considered and I told him my recommendation. I always left room for me to be wrong for him to have a fact I didn't have. Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Gary Bender: But people will come to you and say there's no option. There's always an option. What alternative did you consider? What's your recommendation? I've always told people, you know, analyze the situation, analyze the alternatives. Make a recommendation. You're not going to be wrong for making the wrong recommendation, but I want to see how you think. I want to see what I'm missing. Col. John Boggs: Very good. Gary Bender: I will give you credit for a recommendation, right or wrong. If you don't know, then you're not going to be in that job anymore. Do nothing is not an alternative. Col. John Boggs: Wow, Gary, that right there was worth the price of admission. Man, Gary Bender: And then I'll send you the invoice. Col. John Boggs: I'm going to tell you. Well, thank you. I'll send it right back. That's fabulous. Well, Gary. Gary Bender: You gotta pay the invoice. The invoice determines the value of the message. If you give the invoice and refuse to pay it, then we're not friends anymore, okay? Col. John Boggs: There you go. Hey. Well, if a CEO, a CEO that's listening today, he wants to improve his performance, he wants to do it quickly. Where should he focus first? Gary Bender: Wow, I'll come back to just a risk analysis. And it's not hard to do because we all do budgets. I've done a million forecasts in my life. None had been correct. None. We used to do forecasts every week when we were in trouble. Okay? Never got anyone right. The point is understand why you missed the forecast. Understand what your blind spot is. And it might not be a blind spot. It might just be the market went sideways. and just didn't know it. But my point is, they look at what's driving your misses. That's what the Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Gary Bender: CEO should ask himself all the time. Col. John Boggs: What's striving is misses. Gary Bender: How can we get better? See, the measures in performance, what do you call it, operations before, the measures in performance Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Gary Bender: are very easy. How well did I do it and how quickly did I do it? Speed drives success. Okay? And then how well did I do it? If I made a thousand computer chips and 990 worked and I made them in an hour and not a day, what was it a year ago? It was four hours. And now I'm down to making a thousand in an hour. No, you didn't make a thousand. You're making 990. That's phenomenal. That's an unreasonable number. I've been in the semiconductor business. It's 700 and you got promoted out of a thousand. Okay? But the whole point is And you just look at computer chips as something you and I've grown up watching the dynamics is, Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Gary Bender: you know, the chips were slow and big and expensive 30, 40 years ago. And now they're jelly beans coming out like machine gun bullets. And they all work. Well, my point is, what did Intel do? What did Motorola do? Speed and quality. You might have started at 30 % yield. How do I get to 32? I'm never, I'm not getting to 90. in my lifetime, I'm getting from 30 to 35. And that's an exponential growth in one year. And then how long did it take? Speed and quality. Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm, speed and quality. Gary Bender: It's that easy. I said before, there's two KPIs for each function. The most you can have in functional silos in a company are eight. Seven silos exist in every company, even a nonprofit. Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Gary Bender: You know, whatever. I hadn't studied churches. I'll give you a pass on that one. Okay. But I haven't figured that model out. Okay. But if you're in a startup company making a new product, you have eight process steps by the book, Dr. Hammer, Michael Hammer. Okay. Most companies have seven. There's two measures for each of those seven. If your KPI chart or your dashboard has more than 14 measures in you, the CEO, it really has 16 or 17 because you ultimately get down to return on equity and cash flow. But if you're just looking at how are all the people that work for me doing, your dashboard has 14 measures on it. And you can measure speed and success at the end of every shift. I don't need 30 days of data. I need to know your trend. need to know what went wrong yesterday. How have you fixed it, John? Not how are Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Gary Bender: you going to fix it. Did you know that your yield was 62 yesterday instead of 70? Because somehow I know that stuff. Because I've got process measures built into my company. paperwork or digital or whatever. Speed and quality. Col. John Boggs: But you, and you know daily, you know every day. You don't wait till the end of the month. Gary Bender: It costs three and half weeks to wait for that. Col. John Boggs: Yeah, lot of companies do. Gary Bender: Yeah, yeah. lot of companies fail. Col. John Boggs: Yeah, true, true that. Gary Bender: John, there's a simple fact to it I'm going to share with you here. Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Gary Bender: 50 % of the world of the people in the world are below average, right? 50 % of the companies are below. It's a definition of what's an average, okay? So how do Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Gary Bender: I stay above average? You know, when you grew up, did your mom and dad say, John, I hope you get a 51 in your spelling test tomorrow? No, they were probably in the 90s, right? Col. John Boggs: Yeah, softball. Gary Bender: 80 was you were not going to the playground, Col. John Boggs: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Gary Bender: Parents are that way. My point Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Gary Bender: is just being 50 % successful puts you ahead of the other 50%. But figure out what drives the 90s. But how do you go 50, 60, 70, 80, 90? It's not hard. But nobody accepts average Col. John Boggs: Okay. Gary Bender: performance. You when you did a performance review on your recruits or on your accountants, was an average employee tolerated? You got to explain your job, train them, give them feedback, coach them. And I don't know what your patience level was. Mine never exceeded 90 days. If they weren't making steps in 90 Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. I didn't. Gary Bender: days, I'm a bad coach or I'm a bad trainer. Or I got a knucklehead for a listener. And I would take the first two steps personally. I have not made the expectations clear. I have not trained them or provided the resources or give them a guy like John to watch his best practices. But man, Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Gary Bender: after about four swings that are bad, it's on you. Col. John Boggs: Wow. Well, I'm going to tell you, you hit the nail on the head when you said 90 days. It's 90 days. If you can't turn something around in 90 days, I need Gary Bender: Adios. Col. John Boggs: somebody else. Gary Bender: Adios. Col. John Boggs: Yeah. Wow. Gary, after everything you've done after, and God knows you've done a lot, what still excites you? Because you're still doing stuff. What still excites you to be building and keep doing what you're doing, to keep leading? Gary Bender: Well, I actually reflected on this after we chatted last week, When I was in 11th grade, my high school guidance counselor gave me a 10 % chance of graduating college. And there was a simple reason for that. I was not a great student and you know this part of my life but I'll admit it. At 11 years old I went to work to buy the groceries for a family of five. So at 11 years old I was working 40 hours a week. So the fact that I missed a few homework assignments in high school wasn't surprising because I was washing dishes until 11 or 12 o'clock the night before some nights or the fact that I would, I was late for class, still asleep, okay, or I was making lunch, you know, to carry to school. So I never made it a point that, yeah, we were poor and blah, blah, blah. It's just that, yeah, priority wise, you know, getting a C in English was not on my, getting an A in English was not my priority. Okay? Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Gary Bender: And the funny part of that is I looked at the dictionary one day and I said, my God, there's like 50 or 60,000 words in this dictionary. I'm never going to learn them all. There's only one through 10 in math. I'm going to be really good in math. Math follows laws. Grammar doesn't, spelling doesn't, word usage. I figured out I wasn't that smart. So I found something that was really, really structured called math. And then I found my second thing I found that was structured was things like engineering and chemistry. Cause if you violate the laws, it blows down or breaks up or doesn't work. So I'm, Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Gary Bender: I'm kind of a structured guy. So I don't know that answered your question, but what drives me is I'm curious as hell. I try to learn something every day. I try to help somebody every day. And I like being around young, smart people. And I'm still insecure. Mostly still insecure. Parents and guidance counselors and teachers screwed me up. Got inside my head. Col. John Boggs: Mmm. Gary Bender: They're all dead, they're living rent free there. Yeah. Col. John Boggs: Yeah, goodness. Gary Bender: Yeah. Col. John Boggs: Gary, you really, you nailed it for me. said, you know, stay curious. Because if there's a guy that's out there who is immediately impressive, I mean, that's you. That's you. Immediately impressive. And you stay curious. That keeps you young. You're staying around young people. I mean, for CEOs and senior leaders that are listening today, I hope they paid very close attention, particularly I mean, you said it, you said read, talk, look outside. I mean, things that good leadership, good CEOs are doing. mean, brother, you're all over it. I can't thank you enough. Gary Bender: Well, John, you're doing that with your podcast. I listen to podcasts probably six hours a day and I don't even care what they're about. I never listen to the same podcast. I just listen to stuff all day. even when I'm working out or doing sports, I usually have an earbud and listen to something else. Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Gary Bender: I just, don't know. John, I've kitted around about this. I don't think I kitted it with you. I have seven documented head injuries. fractured skull, blood clot in the brain, five or six serious concussions. Every time Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Gary Bender: I whacked my head, I got smarter. I figured out a new, my brain reprogrammed. But I literally spent 60 days on my back with a head injury and I got up smarter. I learned to multitask. The brain, the body's a miracle worker and the brain will reprogram and I just keep reprogramming my brain. So, I mean, Keep in mind, it's often said we use 11 or 12 % of our brain course power. Figure out, and I'm probably at 12. I'm striving to get to 13 or 14. So how hard is it to get 10 % better in your lifetime? Just learn how to process information. Learn how to catalog information. But I've had some good mentors. any success I've had, owe to others. And my whole point of CFO solution and sharing with over thousand private company CFOs is to share what we've learned collectively, selfishly. It's free. We've documented 1,500 best practices and best processes and better partners to work with. And we've shared that with thousands of CFOs across the country. Col. John Boggs: Gary, can you tell our listeners more about that, the companies you work with, or how they can reach out to you and learn more about you? Gary Bender: Sure. It's called thecfosolution.org. So one word, thecfosolution.org. And it's an ebook website where we, and this we is a group of probably 30 very senior CFO type, COO type CEOs, where we identify and vet best practices and best processes and better partners to work with. So we invite And you don't have to be a CFO, you can be a controller, you can be a CEO, you can be an owner of company. We invite people to look at our website. We've got over a hundred podcasts on there, probably documented six, seven hundred of our best practices, table of contents are organized. The interesting part, it just goes back to what I said a few minutes ago. We've put together what people call Google for Dummies for private company CFOs, coupled with Angie's List. because we basically say, you know, if I had to do this, here's a half a dozen points that are critical to understanding this problem and the solutions that most of your peers use. And if I really wanted to know more, I'll go look at the website that Gary put together and his team put together. And I'll listen to the podcast that the subject matter expert did for half an hour or an hour on the topic and gets really granular. Or I'll just pick up the phone, call the SME expert and say, Gary said it's okay if I call you and they'll take the call. Col. John Boggs: Wow, Gary, it looks like we had a little tech hiccup here at the end. So before we go, how do people reach out to you? How do they reach you if they want to get involved with your nonprofit and the work that you do? Gary Bender: I'll start with Folds of Honor. It's a great mission you served. You know the mission that our veteran families face. So I can be reached very easily through LinkedIn, Gary Bender, or my cell phone, 215-421-8291. Or you can just reach me through the Mid-Atlantic, Folds of Honor. The easiest way to reach me is just pick up the phone. I answer my own phone. I return all calls. Now for business, my business focus, all that work is run through my company named the CFO solution.org. So it's the CFO solution.org. And you can see over 100 examples of what we've done to help private company, financial executives, owners, CEOs with best practices. there's no cost to use our... All the great information I borrowed from other people smarter than me. So lots of content is there. It's there to be shared. We're paying it forward to CFOs, controllers, et cetera. And I'd love to speak to you about whatever challenge you're facing and if we have that content in our inventory. So look forward to it. Col. John Boggs: outstanding. Gary Bender: 215-421-8291 East Coast number. Col. John Boggs: Outstanding and Gary could you could you give us the how to contact you for the nonprofit also one more time? Gary Bender: Well, it's it's gbender at the folds of honor dot org. Col. John Boggs: There we go. Gary Bender: And it's the folds of honor that covers Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland. So if you're in that space and you want to support us volunteer play golf, shoot, shoot clay targets, drink a little beer, some car shows. We're glad to have you involved. It's a great mission and we appreciate the help and support. Col. John Boggs: All right, hey folks, remember that's cfosolutions.org for the business side of things. All right, hey Gary, thank you very much. You're a great American. Gary Bender: My pleasure, my honor. Col. John Boggs: You hung in there through my technical glitch. I greatly appreciate it. Gary Bender: And it might have been at my end where we have good support people. Col. John Boggs: Yes, we do, thankfully. Thankfully. Hey, and for everybody listening out there, remember leadership is too important to get wrong. So please stay the course, stay steady. And that's it on this end out here.