Welcome to How Leaders Lead, where every week you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I break down the key learning so that by the end of the episode, you'll have something simple you can apply as you develop into a better leader. That's what this podcast is all about. Well, my guest today is Junior Bridgeman, a former NBA player who's now one of the greatest entrepreneurs in our country and a real hero in my eyes. When he retired from the NBA after 12 years, he jumped headfirst into the restaurant business. Now it didn't start out great as you'll hear him talk about, but eventually he owned 450 Wendy's locations all over the country. And now he's doing it all over again in a totally different category, this time becoming one of the leading coke bottlers in the United States and all of Canada. And if all that wasn't enough, in 2020, he surprised a lot of people when he bought Jet and Ebony, which like a lot of magazines were really struggling. But as you'll hear him talk about, Junior sees the opportunity to preserve and amplify the stories those magazines have told over the years, something that's so important year round but is especially top of mind right now during Black History Month. In fact, Junior was recently honored with Louisville's prestigious Keepers of the Dream Freedom Award for all the ways he exemplifies the ideals of Martin Luther King, Jr. So you know, it's easy to see why Junior Bridgeman is the real deal for so many reasons. And at every step along the way, from playing basketball to serving his community to building these incredibly successful businesses, he's all about the power of teamwork. As leaders, you know we use the word team a lot. But when you listen to Junior, you realize that true teamwork doesn't just happen because you've assembled a group of people together. It has to be nurtured and led. You're going to hear exactly what Junior does to create that kind of teamwork- driven culture where people truly feel cared about and where they're motivated to go farther together than they ever could by themselves. So here's my conversation with my good friend and soon to be yours, Junior Brid geman. I have to ask you this, you know, I understand your first name is Ulysses. When did you become Junior and why? Everyone called me Ulysses growing up elementary school high school. Even playing basketball, no one called me Junior until I came to the University of Louisville and Bill Olson was the assistant coach. He had been to my hometown recruiting, you know, your mother called you Junior because you were a Junior. And so he said, "I'm going to call you the same thing your mother calls you." And here we are a whole bunch of years later and it just never went away. Well, Ulysses or Junior, whatever you want to be called, I think I'm going to stick with Junior because I've been calling you that for a while. When did you realize Junior that you had the talent and the passion to really play basketball at high level? There was in between my Junior and Senior year at the University of Louisville, I was able to be on the University. Well, it was the USA team that played against the Russians. At that time, the Olympics were every four years and that was the only time they had any real international games. And so we had lost the 72 Olympics. So the Russians came over, they had a team that came over to play against the United States and all college kids, which was what the Olympics were about at that time. So I was fortunate enough to be on that team to play against the Russians, but I barely got to play. I mean, it was David Thompson and Earl, some people like that that started and played. So I really questioned whether or not I could play at the next level because you couldn't play with these guys. Obviously, you're going to have a difficult time playing with the pros. And so I think what that forced me to do was to really go back and work on every aspect of the game before the season started. And really, it was that not playing that was really the impetus to me becoming a better basketball player. And I think really pushed me to try and get to the pros to kind of tell everybody that, well, I got better and I was able to make it at that next level. It's really interesting not playing how that was the driving factor to get you to play 12 years in the NBA. You know, I know your high school team was literally famous. I went 29 and 0 on the state championship. Tell us about that experience and what it was like growing up in East Chicago and in Indiana, basketball is king. I remember seventh grade, eighth grade, even before that elementary school when the high school team was in the tournament, it wasn't on TV. So you would listen to it on the radio, but everybody would be in one room listening to the high school team in the state tournament and pulling farm. And if they lost, I mean, it was just a downer for a whole week. And that was from elementary school up. And I remember listening to the team lose one year and walking the next school day with the other guys in the class with them. And we swore, if I ever got the chance and we were going to play, we were never going to lose the game. And, you know, how little did we know that that would happen might seem your year. But everything was around basketball. I mean, the whole community was driven kind of like Hoosiers, the movie Hoos iers. I mean, that reminded me of how it was like growing up where everyone was focused on the team on basketball and winning and to win the state championship and to go undefeated was something that I could have never imagined. And then even to play with the guys that I played with, Turkovic, who went to UCLA, started went to North Carolina State, Bailey went to Montana, Adele played in North Carolina State, Alsom. We had seven guys from that team that got Division I scholarships. So it was one of those things that happens, I would say once every 50 to 100 years that I just happened to be the right place of right now. What did you learn at that time? You know, you played around with seven guys who all played Division I basketball, all that talent. What did you learn about talent and teamwork with that kind of talent? Interestingly, the team my junior year had more talent than we did my senior year. And yet we lost in the sectionals to a real good team in Chicago Roosevelt. But we had more talent. What happened my senior year is that everyone realized in order for us to win, it couldn't be about who was leading score, it couldn't be about who got the publicity. We had to all be focused on trying to accomplish that one goal and that was winning. And interestingly, the first five games, we had five different leading scores. And so even though Turgovich was a better score, so obviously scored more as a year went on, but no one cared about that. Everyone cared about winning the championship and it was a team effort. And it really taught me that the aspect of what a real team means and a team unity and something that I think I've carried forward in all of the years in the business . I know that you were then highly recruited and you end up going to the University of Louisville. What made you select Louisville? It wasn't the university because there wasn't anything impressive about the University of Louisville at that time. It got down to my freshman coach at the high school there and my parents were real good friends. So he had a big influence and was going to have an influence on where I went. And somehow he and Benny Crumb became friends and actually he had helped Turg ovich go to UCLA. And after he went there, he said, coach Crumb, you need to look at this other kid who was me. And so he came and visited and he really influenced. He being my high school freshman coach was really the reason why I came to the University of Louisville. He was one of the influence me to come in. Was your high school freshman coach your big mentor? He was, but what he would do at that time is his family owned the local restaurant in town. So he would pick guys up and take them there to eat. He kind of befriended everybody and was really the person that tried to help people with life. And so I think with that he became more than just a basketball coach and really more than a mentor, but also a competent to a lot of families and families that had issues going on. And so people trusted him to look out for their sons and to help them make the right decisions as they were growing up in East Chicago, Indiana. You did play for Denny Crumb who became a Hall of Fame coach. And what'd you learn from him about how to motivate people and how to create a winning team? Denny Coach Crumb came from the, obviously the John Wooden system era. And one of the first things he told us was guys, if you're looking for me to give you a motivational speech before every game to get you pumped up to play, then you 'll never be as good as you can be. If you can't find it within yourself to play as hard as you can for 28 games, you'll never be successful and more importantly, if you can't motivate yourself, you'll never be successful in life. And so I remember him saying that like it was yesterday. And so you had to find it within yourself, that drive, not just in basketball, but also in everything after that. And I credit coach Crumb with really getting you to focus on you. And if you're going to be successful, you have to figure out what it takes to motivate you, drive you. Well, just get you to be the best that you can be. You know, when you were in college, were you a serious student with designs on what you're going to do after basketball, or were you focused on just getting the next level in basketball? No, I actually was hoping, and probably if I hadn't played, well, I would have gone to law school. I had taken the LSAT and had gotten admitted to the law school here at the time at the University of Louisville. So that was really what my focus was, you know, almost went to North Carolina State thinking because they said if you come and go to school here, we can guarantee you a job after you graduate in the textile industry, making $10,000 a year. And I thought that was great, you know, because I had never known anybody to make that amount of money. So almost went there. But no, basketball wasn't the motivation it was looking because I didn't know whether I would be able to play on the next level, so I was focused on what can you do to be successful in life with the opportunity you have today? Well you went on to be a number one draft pick in the NBA. I think you're the eighth pick of the entire draft that year, which was amazing . And well, what was it like to go from college basketball to professional basketball? What was the biggest thing you had to learn? How good the guys were on the next level. And you come out thinking that you can play on that level, you know, all these things that are in your mind, people are telling you about how good you are and the eighth pick and on and on just filling your head and your ego. And then you get there and you really see these guys are good too. That's why they're here. So and it was a humbling experience to really realize that you still had to improve to be able to play on that next level. And so even though I had the opportunity and got there, I said, okay, for me to stay, I'm going to have to continue to work and to get better at the game of basketball. Well, you obviously got pretty good at it because your number and your name hangs in the banners of Milwaukee. So congratulations on that great career. But you were only, I think, 31 years old when you retired from basketball. How did you think through the next steps on what you wanted to do in your career? I had the opportunity to continue in basketball. The Bucks offered me an assistant general manager's position when I retired. And I thought about that long and hard, but it really went back to when I represented the player, it's going to collect the bargain. And we would sit around the table and to me at that time, basketball was the most important thing. We would discuss and argue of everything from per diem. And we had to get this and we had to get that because what could be more important in basketball? And when we would take a break, I would notice that we'd go to our little corner of the room and the owners would go to their corner of the room. And we're there talking about the bargaining session in basketball. But the owners are talking about everything except basketball. I mean, they're talking about business deals. And then I noticed how they got more excited as they talked about business and not the business of basketball, but other businesses that they were in. And it dawned on me that maybe I'm missing something here. Maybe the business world is more interesting, more exciting, can be more fun. And so I started spending time with Jim Fitzgerald that owned the Bucks team at that time and just talking to him about business because he was involved in other things other than basketball. And that really got me interested in doing something other than basketball. And I just wanted to see, you wanted to prove to yourself that you could do something, become something other than basketball player or basketball general manager or I just wanted to prove to myself that I could do something else in life. You were offered the assistant general manager with Milwaukee and then you represented the players in the bargaining. So obviously you had some inherent leadership skills that people gravitated to. I mean, who really kind of picked you out as the person to be the leader? It was Larry Flasch who represented the union at that time. He was a big, big part of it. But it was also the coaches, Don Nelson. I mean, they would, they'd ask you to do certain things. And even when I was representing the players, which was opposite of being involved with the team, but they still, what's the right word, I guess, give you that confidence that, or say something that lets you know that they thought more about you than just the basketball player and they saw something there. And the only thing that I would say that I did that was probably the best thing that I ever did, you know, through all those years is I tried to take something from every person that I encountered to help me be better at business, whether it was Jim Fitzgerald as a bucks or one time with kind of the charity golf tournament in Benville, Arkansas. And I got to spend time with Sam Walton and really see how he did things at Walmart at the time and how he interacted with his people. So I was just fortunate enough to have a lot of instances and situations where I could learn and take things from people. I visited Walmart and learned a lot about Walmart, just because there's such a great company. I never met Sam. The great Sam Walton. What was the single biggest thing that stuck out from you when you met him? He at that time was the, according to Forbes magazine, the second wealthiest person in the world, Sydney, my people, some Arkansas. So he was playing in the charity tournament. We got invited to his house. So I thought pulling up to his house there would be all these guards and all these kind of people like that. We pulled up to a ranch house, just drove right up to the front door and it was as modest and nice of seeing his wife and always wanted a Japanese garden and he built that for in the back. The first thing that got me was just how down to earth he was, but visiting with him at Walmart, it was amazing. I'm expecting to see this glacial office and you walked in and it was just a regular office with stuff everywhere. I don't mean it was more stuff, but we walked around Walmart with him and he knew everybody by name and he knew not just their names, but he would tell us a little something about everybody that we encountered. And it was just amazing to me that here Sam Walton knew something about the secretary and everybody that we met as we walked through Walmart. Well, so you had this real inkling that you were going to get into business and you were really starting to become a student of business, but how did you get your toe in the water? Well, I looked around for opportunities and had a banker friend who in Chicago that had a couple of guys that were clients that were Popeyes chicken franchisees. And so he said, well, why don't you talk to these guys not about that, but they 're getting involved with Wendy's and maybe they can, you can get involved with them and figured out a year or two left playing, but he said you can get involved with them. So when you stop playing, you won't have to take the first job because they'll hopefully be making money. So you'll be able to kind of use that as you decide what you want to do. So that's what I did. I got involved with these guys in Chicago. We opened a Wendy's restaurant on the 53rd and Hyde Park and things didn't go as well as we had hoped they would go. And so as it came to the end of my career, I knew that either one of the two things had to happen either I had to get out of the situation with them or figure out something else and Wendy's international got involved and they said, well, if you want to continue in this business, you spend all this time in Milwaukee. Why don't you get involved in Milwaukee? And so that's how I began. I bought five stores from the company in Milwaukee and we just kind of went from there. But even at that time, I never thought that that was what I was going to be doing for the next 30 years. I thought, okay, we'll get these stores going and then I'll do something. I'll figure out really at that point what I really want to do. So how do you learn the restaurant business? I actually went and did everything, went through training in a restaurant. I mean, everything from making and hamburgers and sandwiches to cleaning the bathrooms to on and on. I mean, I went through all the training because I figured that like basketball, if you're going to be successful at something, you have to know it. You have to work at it. You can't just rely upon someone else. And so that's what I did. I mean, I spent, I don't know, 10, 12 weeks going through training. And then I wouldn't spend time with other people who were franchisees just to make sure that the business side of running a restaurant, I understood and got some great systems and ideas from people on the way. Hey, you know, because you're listening to this, I can tell you're the kind of person who wants to learn how to lead well. But there's a lot of companies out there who want to take that desire and charge you $500 or $1,000 or heck, even $20,000 to try and show you how to lead. That's just not right. If you want to be a better leader, I believe you deserve to have access to something that will truly help you and it shouldn't cost a fortune. So I want you to go to howleaderslead.com and start my leadership class. It's really and truly free. And after you take this class, you're going to feel more confident in your role and you'll be on your way to getting big things done with your team. Go check it out at howleaderslead.com. So you started out with those five restaurants in Milwaukee and then how many restaurants did you build into your restaurant empire over, I think, over 500 for sure, right? Yeah, well, about 450. That's almost 500. That's pretty awesome. But one of the things I know you've done, Junior, is you've bought markets, gone into markets that really were not being run that well and turned them around. What did you find when you went into those markets? What did you see that the leaders hadn't done that you were able to do to get markedly better results? It's always about people. And I went back to the team aspect of basketball and when we were successful, we played as a team. So how did that translate into the restaurant business? A lot of times, people don't focus on or don't approach it from the same team aspect. They approach it from this manager, and then you have the crew. And what we did, we tried to understand what was important to everybody in the restaurant. And that meant really understanding the crew and realizing what's important to them. I guess the best example I can give in Milwaukee, we had the five stores and they were low volume stores. No one really cared. And so we did what most people would do. We came in and we needed to get rid of people. So, I mean, one store in the inner city, we turned the crew over three times. And yet it wasn't until we realized that if you're going to get these people to care about this store and this business, they need to know that you care about them. And so in Milwaukee at that time, if you got stopped for a traffic violation, you would have to write to jail. Boom, they just took me crazy as rule or law, but they took you right to jail. And so we would go bail out all of employees in the next day. And we needed them to work. But what it did was it showed the people that we cared more about them than just someone coming to work. And that started the whole changing of the mindset. And they started to think that, well, these guys do care. And then, you know, there's a ton of things where, you know, Rod, and I remember he, his apartment burned down. And so we helped him with all of that. But it wasn't until the people realized that we cared about them more than just someone that worked for us that then things started to change. And as they did, those stores volumes really started to pick up. How much time did you spend just working on creating that kind of culture? That was all we did. And I don't know if that ever really stopped. I think we still work on the culture. You think that it's set and it's how we do business, how everybody looks at the business. But you still have new people coming in. And people may hear about things, but not until they really see proof that this is how you're going to be. This is the type of culture company you have. Do they really buy in? So I don't think it ever stopped. I think we've gotten hopefully better at it. But also I hope that everyone's come to understand over all these years that this is how this type of company we are. I understand you actually have staff that you use to go in and monitor the culture and every one of your restaurants. Tell us about that person and what they do. Well it started with Justie as you know, you'll know the district managers or area operations people going in and just talking to the crew employees about how things are going on in the store. And then it got to the point where, you know, okay maybe we're getting most of the true feedback and maybe we're not getting all of it. And so then we really brought in a company chaplain kind of like that is what he does. But he gets involved with all our crew members on a different level because he 's now involved with them personally and does a lot of things with what's going on in their life. And so once you really get to that level then you really understand what's going on in everybody's mind and you see what they really think about how you're trying to run the business what's how the culture you really have not one that maybe you think you have. And so that's been kind of eye opening and it's helped us turn and tweak and do some things differently to make sure that everybody understands what type of culture you mentioned in the line and the phrase that I think is really powerful for all the listeners which is nobody's going to care about you until you show them you care about them. And so that's what this chaplain type person would do is go in and show an active interest in that person. So you build this restaurant empire you go from five stores to four hundred and fifty restaurants. You know, how did you manage that kind of explosive growth? You started out as a burger flipper, you know, or you're in there watching every detail now you have almost close to five hundred restaurants. You know, how do you manage that? It was never about the number of stores it was never about trying to have a company with that was X, Y, size. It was always about trying to present more opportunities for people to better their lives. And so when we had five stores, you know, you had one district manager that might have been making at that time fifty, sixty thousand dollars. And then when you got to fifteen stores, now you could have three and you could promote from within and when you got to fifty, you could do these. So it was always about that. I think it's a Kenyan proverb that if you want to go fast, go by yourself, but if you want to go far, go with other people. And so ours was always about bringing people along to improve their life so they could make more money so that they could better their lives. And that was really the only strategy we had. And when we looked around, you know, we were, we'd gotten to a hundred and something restaurants but and we were, I think, operating well. So everybody wanted you to be involved and that was really how we grew. You know, your obvious care for people, you know, comes through too. I read that you also, for the NBA, even today, you go in and the commissioner, as you mentor incoming players, you know, the high draft picks and try to coach them to success. What do you tell somebody who just made fifty million dollars, you know, when they're drafted? I might have underestimated it. Yeah, it might be a little more than that nowadays, but you know, the one thing that is interesting is that most of the kids are even though the money is bigger and the world's changed and there's a lot more pressures on them, social media out there, but they're still basically the same type of kids and they come from the same type of background. It's not that much different than maybe I came. And so they have no idea how much a hundred thousand dollars is or how much a million dollars is compared to ten dollars. They didn't grow up talking about that around the dinner table. But the main thing I try to get them to realize is that basketball is only for this amount of time. Their life hopefully is for this amount of time, much longer time and not to focus on everything happening now as far as I got to acquire everything I have to have everything. But let's look at it in a long-term perspective and what's really important, you try to get them to understand what's really important in their life. And they've got all the outside pressures coming in, but when they really get down to what's important for them, try the same thing that important for all of us. Being successful to the best of their ability, being happy and happy means taking care of their family or immediate family on and on. So we talk about really life skills and we talk about getting them to look at themselves from another position. If they weren't the one being drafted, if they weren't the one, but now they're looking at it as other people outside would look at it and really trying to get them to see what the pressures are that they're going to be facing and how do they deal with those. Because a lot of them don't even think they're going to be any pressure. They think money solves everything. You built the restaurant business and I think you shifted that over to your other family members and now you've acquired some coke-bodeling plants and I think around four or five states in the Midwest. What drove that decision to move from the restaurant business now into the bott ling business? I was bored, no. It was a legacy. So what does that mean? When I looked at the bottling business for the Coca-Cola business, it was amazing to me that there were families that were in their fourth and fifth generation of being bottlers. But when I looked at the restaurant business, there was maybe second generation but there just wasn't longevity. And so I thought back to collective bargaining owners in a quarter talking about business again and I said, well, maybe I'm missing something here. Maybe this is something that I should seriously look at. It really was another blessing because Coca-Cola only added three new bottlers in the last 40 years. And then as I've gotten more involved and gotten to meet a lot of the others, only 63 bottlers to meet some of the guys. As I thought third and fourth generation, I've met four guys with their fifth generation bottlers. So that was a big part of it and thinking about the kids and hopefully something that they'd be able to do and pass down and pass down. Well, how are you getting up to speed on this new business? It's an education. There's a lot more to it than just than I'd ever thought. A lot more goes into putting a bottle of Coke on a grocery store shelf than what I'd ever imagined. But then again, it still goes back to what learned a long time ago. It's all about people. We're just doing something different. But if you have the right people and they have the right motivation that hopefully come from the right culture, you can be successful and that's what we're trying to do there. What do you have to have to be a really good entrepreneur? Probably two or three things. One, you have to have a sense that you can accomplish whatever you're after. And you have to really believe that because being entrepreneur, you're going to have ups and you're going to have a lot of downs. But when you have the downs, you just have to say to yourself and believe that I just haven't figured out how to be successful. It's not a knockout below. It's just teaching me that I need to go a different direction. And I think to some extent you have to be not afraid to maybe lose everything, not that you want to do that and not that you go out there and do something stupid. But in my mind, it was never about acquiring money or making money or having a lot of money. That to me, that was never a motivating fact. It was always about trying to build something. And I think when you try and do that, you're going to take some chances. Hopefully they're well thought out. You put a lot of examination into whatever move you're going to make. But even with all of that, sometimes things just don't go well. And you have to then have the confidence, as I said earlier, that you can figure out how to make it go better, how to change things. What did I do wrong? What can I do right? The bottom line is, it's not about you. For me, it's always been about what can you do to make someone else's life better, the people that come to work with you, their life better, how can you make them make more money if that's important and just have a better life. And I think if you add all those things, to me, that's why we've been successful. As a leader, Junior, you're accomplished, but what are you doing now to make yourself even more effective? What are you working on to get better? I feel like to read or read your books, which have been very helpful. The biggest thing that I've had is I've taken from other people like you, you know, Kim Blanchard, just ideas, thoughts. You're always trying to improve yourself. And there's always someone out there that's doing it a little better than you, a little smarter than you. I've got different insight to you. So I've always tried to just take from other people in the meet as many people that are better than I am and to just understand and learn from them. I'll be the first one to tell you that, you know, I wish I wasn't smart as people think you are when you get to this point. But the only smart thing I've done is realize that there are a lot of people out there that are smarter, better, no more. And you need to read about how they got there or talk to them and take whatever nuggets of advice you can get from them along the way. Junior, everybody says you're one of the most humble people they've ever, ever met. You've had so much success. How do you stay humble? It's realizing that it was never something that I did. There's been many people on the way. There's everyone in our company, whether it was a restaurant or the bolling, you know, have all contributed to our success. It was never about me. When I say that I truly was not the smartest, most innovative, most whatever it is, you'd want to put their person. I mean, that's the truth. And I think if you look at yourself realistically, a lot of people would say that. But I think when people have success and people start telling you that you're this and you're that, people start to believe that about themselves. And then I think that's when they really lose sight and get off point and start to believe that they really are those things. When deep down inside, they know that it's normally a lot of people have helped them or they've been very fortunate and very blessed. You know, as an entrepreneur, the people you surround you with is key. And so every person truly counted when you were hiring them. Is you were building your team? What are the must-haves you have to have from anybody that you hire? Well, I think it's no different than back to the team aspect. And when we were great teams, there was caring for what the other people on the team were doing. So caring about the other people you're involved with. But do you always have to have, in my mind, you got to have integrity. You can't exist without integrity or you can't be a part of organization if you don't have integrity and you have to have loyalty. And you have to understand that we have an absolute truth that I tell everybody in our company that we believe in. And so they always say, well, okay, well, what do you mean absolute truth? I say that always, whether it's the bottling company or the restaurant from day one that, you know, this company is based on biblical principles. And so whether they were Christians or Jewish or Buddhist or Hindu, it really didn't matter. What was interesting was that people just wanted to know what you stand for, what you believe in. And then I know that we're going to go this direction, but it's going to be based on this foundation. And so to me, that's been a big part of also why we've been different or maybe the success that we've had. We have young adults as your kids coming into business. What advice do you give them and other people that really aspire to be a leader ? If you had to give one or two, you know, the most important bits of advice, what would you tell somebody? When I do, I said, you know, okay, you're in a position of leading, but you're only a leader when somebody wants to follow you. Nobody follows you, then you're not a leader. So if nobody's following you, you need to understand why that's not happening or what you're doing wrong. And I tell them the other thing is, is that when it's all said and done, it can 't be about what you accomplished. It can't be about what the top two guys accomplished. I said, if you're really successful, when you hit a goal, it should be everyone should say, look what we did. And if they focus on looking what we did, not what one person did, then I think you're really leading people because now you've got to buy in. Everybody understands. Everybody understands the goal. They're all trying to accomplish it out of the group and what we did, not what one person did. Speaking of family, I know you have a wonderful family. And how have you balanced the demands of the business and building the empire that you've built with, you know, and still stayed connected to your family? You know, Dorso, I'm going to give her all the credit because a lot of times, let me go back to basketball, what basketball taught you and made you focus on was that you were the most important person and everything had revolved around you. So I had to get out of that to where especially when you start having kids where no, you're not the most important person. They're the most important person. And then when you get in the business world, it's not, it even become harder because you're trying to grow something and you're trying to accomplish something and now you got all these other people that you are responsible for and how do you balance everything? And a lot of it was her. I mean, she did great job raising the kids, you know, whenever you go on the road playing or trying to go see stores and do all these kind of things. So I've just watched it surround myself with the right main person who was a wife at that time, but I made mistakes. You try to make all the soccer games, the league games, all of that stuff. But then again, I don't think I was any different than anybody else. You're there, but you're thinking about what's going on with this door, that's door or all these kinds of things. So I fell into a lot of the same traps that I would tell people not to do today , but I was just fortunate that as I said, she was there and she let it go far enough and then she just let me have it. That's it. Thanks a strong woman to control the junior freshman. I can tell you that. We'll be back with the rest of my conversation with Junior Bridgeman in just a moment. You know, leaders from the world of basketball seem to really understand the power of a collective team effort because that's also a key leadership idea that Steve Kerr uses as the head coach of the Golden State Warriors. Listen to this. I inherited this Warriors team that was already really good. They had Steph Curry, Clay Thompson, some amazing vets like Andrei Gdala and Andrew Bogut. I can see we had the talent, but I wanted to connect with the bench because I had been there. And so my first year I came up with this idea that our team mantra could be strength and numbers. And it was something that I talked about from day one. We had so much talent. We had so much depth that we were going to overwhelm teams and it really became part of our persona. If you want to unlock the power of your team, don't miss my conversation with Steve. Episode 62 here on How Leaders Lead. This has been so much fun and I want to have some more with my lightning round of Q&A. Are you ready for this? I hope so. What's one word others would use to describe you? Quiet. What would you say is the one word that best describes you? Introspective. If you could be one person beside yourself for a day, who would it be and why? There's probably an admire lot of people, but I can't say there's one person I would want to be. No. Fair enough, especially when you're junior Richmond. I get that. Favorite Wendy's product. Frosty. I'm with you on that, man. Favorite Coke product? Cherry Coke. I was a cherry Coke person. You and Warren Buffett have that in common. What was your favorite basketball arena to play in and why? Madison Square Garden. No question. It was almost as if it was the makeup for basketball, which in some ways it was . Everybody wanted to play well in the garden. It was just something about the setting. I grew up watching Walt Frazier and the early Knicks and getting a chance to play against him at the end of their career was a highlight, but it was always fun to go to the guard. What would I hear if I turned the radio on in your car? Two stations you would hear of the R&B or Seoul station and you'd hear the 70's station. What's something about you that few people would know? I really am not a person that really likes to be around a lot of people. I would probably be just as happy with just a couple of two or three people that you know and have some things in common with and leaving it at that. I think that a lot of people would say that that's a surprise because you make yourself do certain things and be in certain situations, but I've just never really enjoyed just being around a lot of people. It's interesting that you make that last point because you may not like to get up in front of people, but you're a great public speaker. I've seen you speak. You're really, really good at it. You are a broadcaster. You're really, really good at that. I guess it is sort of a real sort of dichotomy of being someone that is more quiet and introspective, yet you are in this public role all the time where you've got to speak up and stand out. I guess I've kind of trained myself for, convinced myself that things that you have to do, I was fortunate enough to get the award from the city, the Martin Luther King Award week, week and a half ago to give you probably a better way of looking at it. There were three or four times I wanted to call the city and say, "No, I don't want it. I appreciate it, but no thanks because I just dreaded having to accept it and having to say something in an acceptance speech. It just worried me." Then to make matters even worse, they gave Don G., who's great in Louisville, a great newscaster, and they gave her an award. I said, "Well, you can go ahead and go before me and give your acceptance speech." She was unbelievably fantastic. I know I had to come after her. I just said, "I knew I should have said no, but it's all over you. You're just thankful." I'm sure you were great too. Hey, Junior, I want to have a little fun here. I'm going to say a few names and I'm curious. The first thing that comes to mind is you think about who they are and how they show up. Let's start with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Who, a person with many personalities? He was a person of many, many, as I say, personalities, probably is the wrong way to analyze them, but he was interested in a lot of things from jazz to history and very, very intelligent. Obviously, invented the sky hook, so to speak, to where I perfected it. When you spent time talking to him in the early days, he didn't want to be bothered. Later on in life, and I've got to be around him later on in life, and it's a different Kareem, someone who finally enjoys who he is and enjoys being around people. Dr. J. Dr. J was a great player, probably someone I had to guard too many times, but he was a great player, but he was also great off the floor. He didn't invite opposing teams over to his house for dinner, and he'd do that. We played him in the playoffs, and he'd have over for dinner, and then they'd beat us. One year, we said, "We're not going over his house to eat anymore." He's just setting us up. His wife at the time came to the game. She was all upset, and she'd made all this food for us, and nobody showed up. We couldn't tell her, "Well, we're just tired of getting beat by Philadelphia and your husband." He was a class act. Everybody always said what a class person he was, and being around him, and spending time with him, it was not a facade. It was not put on. That's exactly who he was on and off the court. Just a great person, and obviously a tremendous basketball player. Michael Jordan. Well, Michael, obviously a lot of people think it was the best player to have ever played the game. I'll tell you my story, and it's hard to argue with that over some of the things that he did, great competitor, no matter what he was doing, he was a great competitor. He was our guest a few years from the Kentucky Derby. One year, he was talking to him, and I said, "Michael, let me tell you what the scouting report on you was when you came into the league." He said, "Schatting a person, let me tell you, when we played you guys with the Bulls, what had he told us to play you?" He said, "Well, what's that?" I said, "Well, they said to push you out on the floor, to get on your right hand, keep you from going right, don't let them throw the lob and let you get a lob dunk, because that gets the fans off going, and give you the outside shot, so you couldn't really shoot." Oh, he got fighting mad. He was, "Who told you that?" I said, "Mike, that was a scouting report. I didn't make the scouting report up, but obviously he became a great all- around player, and in a lot of ways that you can make the argument, and it's hard to argue against him being one of the best, if not the top two or three to ever play the game." Janus. I am amazed at what he can do at his size, but even more, I had the opportunity to meet him at his brothers and his mother and father before he lost his father in Milwaukee, and they were as humble and as down to earth as any family you'd want to meet. Obviously, the two or three of the brothers played in the NBA. Even after he became, he said, "Well, he wasn't a great star that he is today." Yeah, he wasn't thin, but I'll just follow that up with, as he became a star, he would still go by, we had a pizza restaurant in Milwaukee at the time, and he would come in and buy himself, and he'd order a pizza, and he'd sit at the table, and obviously all the crew people would want to autograph in a picture, and he'd do that, and fans would do the same thing, and he would sign and take pictures, and when he was done, he'd get up, and he'd come back to next week and do the same thing, and he'd come back the week after that and do the same thing, and it was just amazing to me that someone who had achieved and was going to become as great as he is today, was that type of person just humble and just willing to give himself or interact with whoever it was, it didn't matter to him, and that had a lot to do with what I saw in his mom and dad a few years earlier . What's your top memory of your NBA career? It's not a game. It's not a game where you might have scored a lot of points, or it's not playoff series. People say, "Well, you swept Boston one year and had Larry Bird, that had to be a highlight." All of those things were fun, they were exciting, but what I see in us back then compared to the guys today is the camaraderie that was built and developed amongst the guys on the teams back then that I don't see today. To give you an example, after a game, we take the bus back to the hotel on an away game, and we're getting off the bus and I would say, "All right, down in the lobby in 10 minutes, let's go to dinner." That's all you had to say, and 10 minutes later there'd be six, seven guys in the lobby, and we'd all go to dinner together and come back to the hotel, and that was how it was being on the road. There was just a camaraderie. That is something that was special and saying about going to war with people creates a whole different relationship, and the same thing, going to battle with those guys over all those years in the NBA, developing, created something that is very special, and a lot of people will not get to experience in their lifetime. We talked a bit earlier about Coca-Cola, and I'd like to dig more into what you 're doing as a Coca-Cola bottler, talk me through into your expansion into Canada and how that's differed from the U.S. part of the business. I'm sure that's been a big learning experience. Oh, yes, definitely it has. We got involved, and they said we were the third bottler, and they added another bottler in New York, of New York, such a difficult place to do business that nobody really wanted to do it, but they found someone to take it over. One state that the only place left that in this re-franchising effort that Coca -Cola had going on was Canada. I said, "Let's see if we can expand or if they'll give us the opportunity to take over in Canada." We put our name in the hat and went through the process, and they said, "Well, it would be great if you had a Canadian partner." Wayne Embry, who just happened to be the general manager at the Milwaukee Bucks when I was there, was now working as a consultant for Larry Tannenbaum, who was the owner of the Toronto Raptors NBA team. He said, "The Tannenbaum family is a great family. Why don't you talk to them and see if they'd be interested in partnering with them?" I talked to Larry and met with him and everything that Wayne said was correct. They were a great family. We formed a partnership and we were able to win the award, or I should say, win the Canadian bottling franchise. We got all the Canada. As they told us the first day when we started meeting with the people, they said, "We are Canada. We are not the northern part of the United States. We are ourselves. We believe in what we do and how we do things." There are some things that are different from healthcare to how they see life in general. The thing that amazed me the most when I started going up there was seeing just how integrated Toronto and parts of Canada are. It is the most integrated country they were saying on this whole planet. People from everywhere and all different kinds of people. Yet, you can walk the streets, which we did of Toronto, which is almost like a New York. You can walk the streets at night and see women walking by themselves at 10 o' clock, 10-3-11 o'clock, and no concern about safety or anything like that. This would really kind of amaze me the first time, a few times we went up there . The other thing that I would say, there is a great sense of pride in the Canadian people. How much pride and love they had for who they were and how they do things. We have been successful in Canada because of that and because of the work ethic of the people up there, it has just been great to see and great to be a part of. What leadership qualities do you see in the people running the best-bodeling businesses? First thing I would say is just understanding as I think when we were in really heavily in the restaurant business, you can only make one sandwich at a time. If you are going to be successful, you have all got to be on the same page. You all have to understand that we are all in this together and no one should feel like there are any less or any more important than the other person. That is what I have seen from the leadership. Now they have had a revolving door the last few years in upper leadership. When you look at our company, whether it is Heartland in the United States or Canada, Canadian bottling company in Canada, what we have tried to do is instill that hometown attitude that you are in this city or that city, you are part of that community there. You are there to make a difference in the community and to make a difference with the people that are involved with you and to just make it a great place not just to work, but to a great place for the community. I think we have instill that hometown attitude, that hometown pride. We just won the bottler of the year by beverage digest here in the United States and Canada. We were awarded one of the best places to work in the whole country of Canada. I think we are doing something right, but it is all stemmed from the fact that it has been about, we say, not just the people that work there, but the families. When you hire someone, someone comes to work with you, you are basically hiring their family. We say in the United States here, we have 2300 families that we are responsible for. We don't take that lightly because what decisions we make don't just affect that one person that is coming to work, but it affects that whole family in a positive way or a negative way. That is something that we don't take lightly and really focus on in every decision that we have to make. You also own Ebony and Jet Magazines. That is a business that has been totally disrupted in the past several years. I can't imagine you being the business person that you are going into that unless you thought there was some sort of opportunity. What do you see in tackling this business and what's the upside? I grew up outside of Chicago, Illinois. We were old enough to drive into Chicago along Michigan Avenue. One of the big, big signs you would see on one of the buildings on Michigan Avenue was the Ebony sign. Way back when when you were a kid, that gave you a great feeling to know that Ebony Magazine was headquartered there and that magazine as a black family was so important growing up. Reading was on the dining room table or coffee table, whatever it was, that's where it was headquartered at. When they fell on hard times and they fell on some pretty hard times, why would you go and buy a magazine when people weren't reading magazines anymore? They could get all the information they wanted online. Why would you go do that? The reason why we did it is because Ebony has 75 years, they've been around 75 years, but they've 75 years of not just black American stories, but 75 years of American stories, 75 years of history of things that have gone on in this country and that's really where the true gem is and what do I mean by that? There are the content for those 75 years is so important that we've been approached by everybody from all the hula's, the HBO's, the prime. Everybody wants to have access to that content because there are stories in there that need to be told or need to be made in the movie that are in the series. You look at the movie that was a success hidden figures that came out. That was first written about in Ebony Magazine a number of years ago. People still talk about the image tale story that became a movie. They always refer to the picture on the cover of jet magazine of him during the funeral that was kind of an eye opener for the time and changed a lot of people's thoughts about what was going on in civil rights at the time. There's just story after story, not just all political. There's entertainment, there's sports, there's just stories about what was going on in this world in this country over the last 75 years and things that need to be told. So that's really what we saw and where we think the real future is of Ebony. We'll still make what we're doing, you know, digital magazines, but just getting into the process with my daughter is not I'm not she is just getting the process of categorizing all of the stories and then seeing what direction you want to go and what needs to be made here or there. Now, one thing that I know is not going to be a money maker for you because you and I are in this business together is that we along with a couple of our friends, Matt Valhalla, which is a championship golf course in Louisville. You know, I know why I got involved, but why did you get involved? We all have an affection, an affinity and a love for golf. It's a great game. It exposes every aspect of your personality, your character, everything. Oh, man, playing a game with the ball and a stick, so to speak, that's not baseball, but it's a diamond in the rough. And why can you say that even though they've had, you know, four PGA and couple senior PGA championships, but it's still a golf course that never reached its full potential. It should be one of the top golf courses in this country. I mean, it's got everything there except being polished, so to speak. It needs to just, you know, take that rag and polish his buffet a little bit and I think it'll be there. And that's what we're doing. And so, okay, even though that probably not going to make any money for anybody , but what it will do, it will instill, I think, and increase the pride in the city of Louisville, state of Kentucky over a venue that is not just nationally known, but internationally known. And you look at Kentucky, I mean, aside from maybe Churchill Downs, the only thing that anybody really knows if you mentioned it by name would be Bauhaus. We all feel like this is something that we can do that will last and live long after, you know, we're not involved and maybe not even around. I want to thank you so much for being on this show. And you're just an incredible person and I would say a great man. There are very few great men in the world, great people in the world, and you are and you're proof positive that if you do the right things, the right things happen and you've always put other people ahead of you. And I don't know anybody that's more humble than you. And I'm just so proud that I can call you a friend because you're an amazing, amazing person. Thanks for being on the show, buddy. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks for all you're doing and the impact you're having. And I've given your book to almost everybody in our office. So you're still making a difference in lives. Thank you for all you're doing. Well, there's no doubt junior Bridgeman is just in a class all of his own. Not an extraordinary person. I'm so happy you got to listen in on that conversation and learn from a great man. For junior, it's all about the power of people working together. I love that. Whether it's winning championships or turning around a Wendy's restaurant, the idea is the same. When you care about your people more than yourself, when you care about the big goal, more than who gets the credit for it, well, that's when magic happens. So as you go about your work this week, ask yourself, does my team really work as a team? Do we put the big goal before our own individual contributions? Do we value each other's unique skills? Do we know how to combine our efforts to do more? When you can create that kind of teamwork driven culture, I know you and your people will celebrate some incredible stuff together. So do you want to know how leaders lead? What we learned today is that great leaders know that we go farther together. Coming up next on How leaders lead is Dr. John Nosedworthy, CEO emeritus of Mayo Clinic. Over a decade, we were able to drive out a lot of waste, drive up our margins so we had enough margin at the end of the year to invest in research and education and in our staff. And our quality got better. I mean, Mayo Clinic always had great quality, but it got much better because people were focused on what is it that we do that makes a difference to the outcome of that patient? So be sure to come back again next week to hear our entire conversation. Thanks again for tuning in to another episode of How leaders lead where every Thursday you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I'm making a point to give you something simple on each episode that you can apply to your business so that you will become the best leader you can be. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO]