BIZ/DEV
David Baxter has over fifteen years of experience in designing, building, and advising startups and businesses, drawing crucial insights from interactions with leaders across the greater Raleigh area. His deep passion, knowledge, and uncompromising honesty have been instrumental in launching numerous companies. In the podcast BIZ/DEV, David, along with Gary Voigt, an award-winning Creative Director, explore current tech trends and their influence on startups, entrepreneurship, software development, and culture, integrating perspectives gained from local business leaders to enrich their discussions.
BIZ/DEV
Step to the Left w/ Michael Turner | Ep. 164
In this episode of the Biz/Dev podcast, David and Gary catch up with Michael Turner—actor, voice guy, sports announcer, and the mastermind behind Ruby Event Staffing. Michael’s got stories for days, from hanging out with A-listers to working events with a chair that had its own security detail. Oh, and did you know it costs $800K to gas up a superyacht? Neither did we. Tune in for a fun, behind-the-scenes look at the wild world of events, building a business, and making your own way in a star-studded industry.
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The Podcast
David Baxter has been designing, building, and advising startups and businesses for over ten years. His passion, knowledge, and brutal honesty have helped dozens of companies get their start.
In Biz/Dev, David and award-winning Creative Director Gary Voigt talk about current events and how they affect the world of startups, entrepreneurship, software development, and culture.
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[00:00:00] Michael: If you take nothing else from this podcast, please take that. Whatever happened wrong in your life today was David Baxter's fault.
[00:00:09] David: Hi, everyone. Welcome to the biz dev podcast the podcast about developing your business. I am David Baxter, your host, joined today by Gary Voigt, who is always with me, unfortunately. How are you doing, Gary?
[00:00:21] Gary: Pretty good. I'm looking forward to today's guest
[00:00:24] David: So today's guest is I have known him since Eighth grade, we were in choir together. I know that his nickname in high school was Nippy. I know that he has been an actor, an MC, a waiter, a voice talent. He is the voice of Zero on Borderlands video game, which is the coolest thing ever. Cause I'm a huge nerd.
Actually this is a true story. I took a picture. We had just beaten the game, me and my son. We took a picture of the credits that were going and it said Mike, it didn't even say your name correctly. Mike Turner was the voice of zero. Which I found out later from Michael, who is our guest. The guy never called, said his name correctly.
Is that right?
[00:01:04] Gary: We should probably introduce a while, but that feels right. Yeah.
[00:01:08] David: Okay. So this is my friend, Michael Turner, who is he's up in New York and he is Founder of a staffing company called Ruby event staffing, which is what we're going to eventually get to. But this is very fun for me. So hello, Michael. Welcome.
[00:01:23] Michael: Hey, buddy. How are you? It's great to see you.
[00:01:25] David: I am good. This is very weird because I think this is the first time I've ever done anything in a professional capacity with you in any way, shape or form.
I did build your websites many years ago,
[00:01:34] Michael: It is. It's interesting when you like, in Ghostbusters, they say never cross the streams.
And this is, it's like the professional version of crossing the streams,
[00:01:43] Gary: I think that
we're professionals
carrying a lot of weight here. It's
[00:01:47] David: That is,
[00:01:47] Michael: Yeah, that's a
lot of heavy lifting for the word
[00:01:50] David: lot of heavy lifting. so
[00:01:52] Michael: big quotes around that.
[00:01:54] David: you have done also, he was Chuck Norris, young Chuck Norris back in the day. He was in the he's not in the super bowl, but you've as an MC, you've been to the super bowl final for 8 million NASCAR events.
And now you're doing it and you're still a working actor. Is that accurate to say? Yes You still do some mc work and now you decided you were bored and let's start a staffing company How
[00:02:20] Michael: Yeah
[00:02:21] David: happen?
[00:02:22] Michael: I started this company by accident. First of all, my wife says I have the disease of hard work I can't not work my tail off. It's just something I was born with and I don't know, I can't not throw my back into everything I do. And other people go out and get hobbies and I go and get another job. It's what I've always done. When I was living in LA I remember my wife asking me why, like, why are you driving Uber? I was driving Uber and it was like a particularly successful acting year for me. I'd done like 13. Commercials that year and was like crushing it. It's not i'm not saying that to brag but saying that to say I didn't need the Money, but I had the time and other people are like, oh I have time.
I think i'll learn how to knit I'm, always oh I have five minutes Let's see if I can wedge another job in here. That's just the idiot that I am and so when kovid hit I don't know if you guys had heard about kovid but things shut down I don't know if it
[00:03:14] David: I mean I might have slept through it
[00:03:16] Michael: Yeah.
So when COVID hit, the acting world came back slowly. But a friend, uh, I had been, I'd done a little bit of catering. When you're an actor, you've done hospitality work that
[00:03:28] David: That's required,
[00:03:29] Michael: Yeah
I went to work a private event and I was a waiter with this very high end private chef. And she said, Hey, you're really good at this.
Give me your number. I'll call you. We'll do it again. And I did. And then she started saying, Hey, can you bring two people with you next and three people with you next? Give me four people with you. I understand you can't come. Can you send four people anyways? And I thought, yeah. Yeah. Okay. I thought I'd do that five or 10 times.
And by the end of that summer, I'd done it like 30 or 40 times. And I was like, oh crap, I better go form an LLC and get insurance and stuff like that before uncle Sam just kicked me right in the teeth. And so I did and thought, I don't know why I did that. I'm sure this is just going to end tomorrow. And that was right after the pandemic maybe. Early 2022 late 21 something like that and it just keeps happening and this year We just did our final numbers for last year and we covered something like almost 600 shifts around the around mostly around the tri state new york area, but we also sent people to the nfl draft and all over the Country and then we did about 400 events last year.
So we're growing and moving and it just keeps happening and every time I think we wrap up for the year I think oh, I guess we're done. It won't happen again. And then we get a new client and it just keeps happening so I guess Uh, we're screwing up in all the right ways
[00:04:45] David: I will tell you that most entrepreneurs are telling you to shut up right now
[00:04:51] Gary: Yeah. A little mad.
[00:04:52] David: is falling on your face. Oopsie, I have another client is just not what most people experience. Why do you think so? We. So what you don't realize that the audience, as it were, doesn't realize this is far outside of Michael's normal world.
So business y kind of stuff and that stuff, this is all new, right?
[00:05:14] Michael: Yeah, so new
[00:05:15] David: So one of the things that we talk about on this show, which I'm sure you've listened to all of the episodes. I have
[00:05:21] Michael: every single second. Yeah,
[00:05:22] David: single one. We talk about the slog, which is the time when you start your venture to the time anybody cares, which could be anywhere from weeks to months to years where you're bringing in your own clients and it's become easy.
But it sounds like you skipped that step.
[00:05:36] Gary: You started
with the care.
[00:05:38] David: Yeah. Is that just luck? Is that, you're, did you have connections prior? You didn't know this chef beforehand, right? You just
[00:05:48] Michael: I did not
[00:05:49] David: and did a good job.
[00:05:50] Michael: Yeah. And the chef was, it was she was a private chef that was doing really high end events. We were doing a baby shower for a celebrity who I probably shouldn't say their name, but, We were doing that baby shower. And so I was in an apartment in a building called the Dakota, which is like a famous place where John Lennon lived before he died.
Humphrey Bogart, all these people. So yeah, it's just a lucky spot to end up. And then met this person who was connected with these people and then one thing led to another I think maybe i've experienced the slog paced out over time because there's been a couple of times when You know, we'll do this for we now it's a steady stream, but there was a couple of times when we thought okay That's it. We're done. We did everything we have to do. I think it was like two years ago in september Uh, I was talking to the guy who's my second banana, my right hand man, this guy, Justin, and I was talking to Jocelyn and I said, Hey man, we have no more events on the calendar. I think maybe this is where we part ways.
And he was like, yeah, I think we're done. What a good job we did. And literally that afternoon, we got a call from someone who said, can you send us 50 people on Saturday? And we were like, okay, I guess we're not done. And it just gets, we have had this log, but it's been, In chunks that was not much of one, but there's been a couple of smaller bits
[00:07:05] David: It's still,
[00:07:06] Michael: a lot of luck.
[00:07:07] David: so how many people, Oh, go ahead, Gary.
[00:07:10] Gary: I was going to say, so you don't have the burden of trying to find clients. They come to you. Did you have at least the burden of figuring out how to turn what you were doing as favors into a business Create the business side of it?
[00:07:24] Michael: Yeah, because at first honestly at first I was putting myself on all the jobs. So it was like I wasn't really thinking about a margin for everyone else, if it'd be me and five other people I wasn't considering margin at all because I was like I'm just doing this so I can make The money that I was thinking I was gonna make today And then it dawned on me I guess I could make a little money on everybody else. So then I would take a tiny bit, but I didn't consider, I didn't have bills to pay at that point as far as like the company didn't have bills to pay, so it was like if I was making X and I made five more dollars off the other guys, that's fine, like bonus, but then as it kept going, you started learning, oh no, crap. If you're going to have a business, the business is going to have bills and responsibilities. And now you have to figure out how to do it in a way that is meaningful, sustainable, fair, but also, does put money in your pocket. Otherwise, like, why are you doing this?
[00:08:19] David: Someone told me that no one starts a business, have a job. You don't start a business just to give yourself a job. You start a business to get benefits from said business, right? If you just wanted a job and you got a salary, you could get that anywhere, but if you're going to go through the stress and the pain of owning a company, there should be something extra that comes from that.
[00:08:42] Michael: Yeah.
[00:08:43] David: that guy may just want more money, but at the same time, there's a lot that comes into owning a business. It's stressful. The buck stops with you, right? There is no, at the end of the day, if someone's going to yell at somebody, it's probably going to be you.
And a lot of times you're putting a lot of your own personal wealth into a business to see if it succeeds.
And a lot of people forget that. Like I remember when I was a young developer back in the day, I remember this is that I was making like 50, 000 a year, which right out of college, this was in the early two thousands.
[00:09:16] Michael: Right. At college. That's like, You're a millionaire.
[00:09:19] David: I thought I was living the life. Okay. So if you break that down into a normal hourly rate, that's about 25 an hour.
So I found out that my bill rate at the time was 90 an hour. And I'm like, dude, clearly I'm being abused here. I'm being paid 25. I'm making the guy, the man, 60 an hour. I'm making him, and I do the math, something like 300, 000. Clearly I am being abused. Now I'm on the other side of that coin and I realized that how thin the margins actually are from a real business.
And most people don't ever see that side. They don't see both sides. They see only the, I'm the worker. I find out my bill rate. If you're catering guys, gals found out how much you charging on the bill. Oh, he is robbing me blind. Even though they're not thinking about payroll and they're not thinking about taxes and this, that, and the other and all the other bills that you have to pay.
It's a weird thing. It's just owning the business is a different kind of beast.
[00:10:21] Michael: Agreed.
[00:10:21] David: done so many types of jobs. It's not fair to ask what you like most because they are completely different. But do they scratch different itches? Do you find you get fulfillment out of each one differently?
[00:10:34] Michael: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And there, there's a piece of me that loves being a leader and loves helping people and loves feeling like I'm contributing to the greater good. And also that I'm, scratching an itch for someone else or, and that's the part that loves being a business owner because I love a client saying, I have a need, but And then being able to say let me help you fill the need. That feels like that's extremely satisfying on that level. An actor is a totally different kind of satisfying, no one's casting an actor because they have a need. They're having an actor because they have a want, like I want to see this cool thing happen. I want to see what you can do. So it feels more when in my business, it feels like I'm doing something that like really has gravity and whatever. And in my. Staff and catering business, but in my acting world, it feels like I'm doing something more ethereal more. You know what I mean? More fun more. So yeah, it's just a different kind of satisfaction for sure. And I don't know which one I like more I think it depends on when you ask me, I've just shot something really cool, you know Then I'll tell you acting is my favorite thing in the world But then if we just accomplished a really cool thing with my business, then I'm like, I probably could live without acting.
This business is everything. So it's like recency bias for me. So we're in slow season right now. So right now I'll tell you acting is my favorite thing
[00:11:57] David: Act
[00:11:57] Michael: but check with me in three weeks and it'll
[00:11:59] Gary: Yeah. I was gonna
say wedding season's going to start pretty soon. So
[00:12:02] Michael: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
[00:12:04] David: So how does your day break? Not day, that's not right. How do your percentages on an average month break down? Are you mostly doing the staffing stuff now? Are you mostly, or does that completely change because you'll do a show and that's all you do for a while? Are you building your company?
I'm sorry. I'm asking now 12 questions at the same time. Let me get you to answer the first one, right? How does that break down? Like, where's your timing ish?
[00:12:28] Michael: I've always been. The guy who's good except I've been exceptionally unorganized and exceptionally organized at the same time if that makes sense my whole life like unorganized because I was the kid that would unzip my backpack and just have A chunk of papers floating around in there that should be in folders, Like I was that kid growing up But very organized mentally in the sense that like i've always been a guy who's multitasking always, like I was always When I went to grad school for theater, I'd always be riding my bicycle to school and going over my lines at the same time And even now i'm at I literally so like this last year.
I did a play in florida where You know i'm playing the lead in it and I would find myself in the middle of the play having this dramatic intense moment With this other actress and like arguing with her in the moment and in the middle My brain is like running payroll for ruby My company and like doing this and so it's just like that Like I think I just constantly have to have a mind that I know is gonna be split you know and just to do it and They were like at this Play I did in Florida this year that they would always laugh because they'd be like, okay We got a 15 minute break everybody and everybody else's, you know Sitting down and having a cup of coffee and I'm immediately on the phone going. Hey, you know Can we get Jeff there at eight o'clock instead of eight thirty and Can you do me a favor and order 150 more of those shirts we need and and so i've just found for me. It's a matter of just like using my time extremely wisely. And also I really, to be honest, I'm not a big sleeper. I don't know what this sleep is. Everyone talks about, I don't, I'm not good at it. I've never been very talented at it. I usually work till about one in the morning. And then I get up about seven in the morning and I do it again. And I'm just, Not happy if i'm not doing so That's what my schedule is.
I get up at six seven in the morning Sit down on my laptop do as much ruby as I possibly can then sometime in that day I got an audition or two. I shoot it behind me as I told you before the show That's my voiceover booth. And then I have this is a studio that I shoot as well. So shoot a couple Commercial auditions a couple of tv auditions, whatever go back to ruby you know literally while I was preparing Doing the tech for this I was on the phone with with this guy Justin my like right hand banana guy He's got to get a professional headshot done because we're getting a new website and he's trying to figure this out So that it's just for me.
It's going to be always be like multitasking and just juggling And that's all I can do and when there's too many balls in the air that's when it cues me that someone else has to take one.
[00:15:02] David: Do you bill, are you building your business different so that you can disappear for a long period of time? If you've got to do a show for eight weeks in Utah, which sounds amazing. I'm sure that happens a lot to you as Utah big theater place. Anyway. Do you build it so that you can vanish? That's such a weird thing.
[00:15:22] Michael: Yeah, I was, when I did that show, it was busy season for us for my company. And, um, what I know is that during rehearsal and rehearsal for a play is going to be about two, three weeks. And so during rehearsal, it's going to be, eight, eight hour days. So I'm going to work before it, I'm going to work on lunch hour, I'm going to work after it, I'm going to work on all my breaks.
But then once the show opens itself I have to like You call times probably at six o'clock, something like that. So I have, and I get to the theater insanely early. Cause as I mentioned, I'm a workaholic. And if my call time is at six o'clock, I like to get there by four 30 and I go, I have to say every single word of the play before the play starts and I'm a weirdo like this, but I have up until that moment to work on everything else. I have to do. So for me, it's just about organizing my time in that sense, being real intentional. And then, like I said, when I find that there's too many balls and that tells me if I drop one or two, I tells me, okay, it's time to take one step to the left and somebody else has to handle this now. So now this has to be this other guy's job.
And as an entrepreneur, as a new business owner, that seems like that's the hardest thing is when you realize, okay, I have to give over this piece of responsibility to someone else. Scary as heck. Yeah. To do it, but you have to do it. Otherwise, you're not growing,
[00:16:37] Gary: yeah, that's when we hear a lot is Usually towards the end of the show, we'll ask people advice. And a lot of times it'll be the, don't be afraid to admit what you're not good at, even though it is your business every now and then you've got to step back and be like, okay, I have to give this away in order for it to grow.
So in your case, it seems like you're
giving away things probably more often than not with the amount that you're taking on all the time.
[00:16:59] Michael: yeah, we use a company we use a term a lot in our small little company, there's only four of us, but we use a Term a lot that we call it just Everybody takes one step to the left There's times when we're like hey, it's time. We all have to take one step to the left So this was my job now It's your job, which means the job you were doing is now his job Which means the job he was doing is now her job.
So one step to the left everybody know, so we,
[00:17:22] David: What
[00:17:23] Michael: all you can do, huh?
[00:17:25] David: What triggers that? What, when, what does it mean when it's time to take, why would you hand off your job to somebody else? Like you personally, you're busy, you have to disappear for a while. That makes somewhat sense. But you've got a guy who's your finance guy. You don't want probably him corralling the staff as it were.
[00:17:42] Michael: exactly. I think it's almost always a bandwidth issue for us, like a mental bandwidth issue, not a literal one, that like for instance, right now we have a new chunk of business we're going after a new little, we're just beginning an endeavor to grow into a little bit of a new space. Which is a really exciting thing for us, but it's brand new, and we have no idea if we're going to be good at it or not, but it's a cool opportunity and we're going to try. But that means I have to have a lot of mental bandwidth free to do it. And so there are things that I'm good at that I can do all the time, but if I do them all the time, I don't have the bandwidth to focus on this new thing because we're all finite creatures, right?
For me It feels like every time we step to the left it's a mental bandwidth issue that like it's not necessarily because this guy's not good at that It's because I just don't need him focusing on that anymore Like you said the finance guy may be great at wrangling the staff. However, he's here to be the finance guy.
So Stop doing that, so I think it's almost always a bandwidth issue.
[00:18:36] David: How does someone who is, been the star of everything he's done. You're either the star of a show. You're the emcee in front of 10 000 people Go to being a dude in the office
[00:18:50] Michael: Yeah, it's a double edged sword On one hand. Yeah, I miss everybody looking at me but on the other hand, I feel like i'm prepared for it because just you're the star, you know if i'm emceeing a big stage something goes wrong behind me on that stage You know a lot of times on these stages i'm introducing a big band or a big artist or i'm hosting a thing If that guy's not ready they're booing me And it's not my fault that celebrity number 12
[00:19:15] David: Hootie and the blowfish is not ready
[00:19:17] Michael: I've worked with hoodie.
Yeah, and
[00:19:19] David: I have no
[00:19:20] Michael: him both
[00:19:20] Gary: blowfish In the back
[00:19:21] Michael: and in his country. Iteration of himself old dairy's record and so it's hard to they're booing me, but I recognize that I didn't do it. Why are you booing me? It's the, Pitbull's drummer is the one who's not ready.
Why are you yelling at me? But that's the, isn't that the exact same thing that happens as a business owner? They're yelling at me and you're like, it's not me. My employee screwed up. Why are you yelling at me? It just lets you know. No, it is you. You know what I mean? At the end of the day, it is you.
If you're the one who chooses to stand out front with the microphone and introduce everything and calls attention to yourself and says, put the spotlight over here. Then when the thing behind me goes bad, I can yell and scream all day that it's not me, but it is me. And that really prepared me to be in this position as a business owner, because it is me, like my employee screws up at a thing or something's not quite right because somebody didn't understand it.
That's my fault. You know, so I think in a sense it prepared me to do that. But the thing I like about it is then there's times when I can disappear, which is also great.
[00:20:18] David: so
[00:20:19] Gary: sure everyone knows now that if they screw up, it's David's fault.
[00:20:22] Michael: It is David's fault. Yeah.
If you take nothing else from this podcast, please take that. Whatever happened wrong in your life today was David Baxter's fault.
[00:20:31] David: man. It's funny you say that. Cause I, I have been the shield for my team for years. That is my job, right? That's a big part of my job. Sometimes when we're all cylinders are firing, it thankfully is not, but there are many times where yes, someone does screw up and it's, it doesn't because the only face that they ever see.
Is yours and it is part of my job because I know like generally business owners, I have some sort of a big personality, not always more often than not. And a lot of my employees in particular, but I'm sure this is true across most industries. There's a lot of people. In the dev world who have smaller personalities, they don't want to talk to people at all.
And the, if someone is upset at them, they take it very personally. And that it bends them out of shape and that could throw them off for a good while. And so it is, it's like my duty to be that shield. And in our case, we actually put multiple levels of shields before you get to the people actually doing the work.
And that is to protect those people because they don't, they're not, that's not what they're here for. They're here to do this. And now we're going to have a private conversation about what they screwed up, right?
[00:21:44] Michael: Right.
[00:21:44] David: But we're going to have that conversation. But it is. In our case, we have project managers are going to get chewed out first.
And if that chewing is not enough, then they will come to me and chew me out as well. And that's always fun, but it's part of the job, right? You just that's part of owning it. So I'm changing gears again, cause I have I'm a bit ADD on my own. Business owners wear lots of hats. Your personality is obviously quite large.
What do you enjoy doing the most? Do you enjoy, and what do you hate the most? Do you enjoy the salesy stuff, which would be more closer to your acting bit, right? You're performing. Do you prefer the, client relations bit? That's also very similar to what you're used to doing. Or do you find yourself preferring the back office Heidi?
Oh,
[00:22:34] Michael: not sounding like a broken record, but the thing I like the most, it's probably the same reason why I don't know, we probably have to get a therapist in here to verify if this is true, but probably the same reason I like performing is that, people clap, you get to the end and people say, yay, thanks for doing what you did. And I think that's my favorite part of my job too, is that I get to make people happy. Like we do events that are very special to people. Some of them are just, corporate event not special and that way but a lot of times It's like a really special thing, and it's really cool for someone to come in and say Hey, we've got this thing and it's really big It's my husband's 60th birthday or my daughter got into this thing or my son just finished the new york marathon Or we got a special event for this person Guy or that guy or even if it is corporate, Like we're doing a huge thing But it's big for us and when you help them accomplish that thing and you see how happy they are about what they got done And how well it went for them for me, that's the best part and Honestly, I've had to tell myself that is the thank you because what happens a lot is We plan like crazy, but they get the glory.
Do you know what I mean? Like we plan a huge event for people it goes really well And then everybody goes to the person who bought the event you know the client and goes what a great event you threw and then You're standing five feet away, and you're like Yeah, okay, but I've learned that's the joy in it is seeing them Be able to flex for their friends and feel like they made their family happy or whatever it is That's my favorite part.
It's Just helping people have a better day and go better about it. And that helps me because a lot of our clients are quite wealthy. we work with a lot of billionaires and millionaires. Our clients include Oscar winners, Grammy winners.
[00:24:23] David: Dude, you've got to tell us. I've heard these stories for years. You cannot end this podcast without telling one of your insane stories. You don't have to mention any names. I'm thinking of the one with the Japanese chair, perhaps.
[00:24:35] Michael: Oh yeah.
[00:24:36] David: the one where the woman who handed you wads of cash, cause she
[00:24:40] Michael: Oh, that one too. Yeah. Those are all
[00:24:43] David: goods. You
have to tell me at least one.
[00:24:46] Michael: Yeah. Let me tell you the Japanese chair one. Cause I think this is my favorite. This is my favorite story. I think of all, cause I like to say, so for instance yes no, two days ago, I took my guys and we did an event at a 65 million dollar apartment in New York City.
I know that because it was, the event was because the apartment's for sale. And they had
[00:25:03] Gary: but that's just like
a two bedroom downtown, right?
[00:25:06] David: That's just a small efficiency up on the top
[00:25:08] Michael: yeah. yeah. It's on the 80th floor on Billionaire's Row. 65 million bucks. And I didn't know this, but the maintenance fee for 65, do you guys want to take a guess on what you pay maintenance per month for a
[00:25:19] David: maintenance. What does that include? Is that like the doorman or what? What is the maintenance in New
[00:25:23] Michael: Uh, yeah, the doorman and stuff.
I
[00:25:25] Gary: Make clean? Are they repairing? Okay.
[00:25:27] Michael: it's
not cleaning and pit, uh, repairing. That's on
[00:25:30] David: going to go
[00:25:32] Michael: the overall building stuff.
[00:25:34] Gary: Hundred thousand.
[00:25:35] David: 000 a month.
[00:25:36] Michael: It's, uh, 35, 000 a month
[00:25:39] Gary: Jeez.
[00:25:40] Michael: the
[00:25:40] David: that reminds me of a stat. I heard people who own a yacht, like the super big boats to fill up.
One of those super big boats is like 600, 000
[00:25:49] Michael: I have a story about that. We did an event for a Russian oligarch's daughter.
She came to us and said Hey, I'm turning 20. And my dad said I could throw a dinner for my friends. I want to throw a fancy dinner in this space in our Build they have a beautiful amenity space in this high rise building where a bunch of the yankees live And we go there we throw the party her dad gave her a modest budget of just twelve thousand dollars and like You imagine being 20 your
parents being like you're trobojan like whatever so they got done And they were dressed up really nicely and I said, oh you all look great You're heading out to go hit up the club.
She's no i'm going get on my dad's boat I don't know what she's talking about. They walk out. We're on 11th So 12th is where the water is she turns goes to 12th and there's like a 200 foot yacht there It pulls up and she gets in with her friends and away they go. And anyways, I said to the client the next day, her dad, I said, boy what a great event.
You must be so happy. Your daughter was so pleased. You must be really excited about this. It's cool to see a dad who's willing to pull out all the stops for his daughter. And he goes, yeah, man. And he said exactly what you said. He said, yeah, man, she has no idea how much I do for her. Filling up the yacht alone was 800, 000.
And I was like,
[00:27:00] Gary: Whoa.
[00:27:01] David: think you should wait. I think it's so funny. You're saying he, she had a 12, 000 budget for the party, but puttering out of the Harbor cost 12, 000.
[00:27:11] Michael: dude. So crazy. Okay. So the chair story, I'm in the Hamptons, I think this is two or three, two summers ago, something like this. We're there. And it's just me and one guy. We were contacted by what they call the house manager, which is, that's what they call butlers now. So this guy's Butler.
We're there. Give you an idea of what this party was, the wine showed up in an armored car in an armored truck. We had 22 people at this party. Newest wine I served was from 1984. And the oldest wine I served was from 1921. And then we had a bottle of cognac from 1895 or something that we poured at the end for just the very special guests who were left. And as we were setting up just the two of us, they're helping the butler. My the guy that I brought with me, he said, wow, man, this place is like a museum. And the butler said that's cause it is because you know how, when you go to a museum, it says, these pieces are on permanent loan from so and and he said the butler, I, by the way, I never knew this guy's name because the butler's been working for him for 25 years and still calls him the mister and his wife the missus. So he says, the mister has pieces in the Louvre and in the Met and in MoMA and in the Guggenheim. This is what he does.
He's a very passionate collector. And so I said, okay just out of curiosity, what's the most expensive thing in here? Why? He said, you'll never believe it. Look down to the hall. You see those two little wooden chairs there. And there were two wooden chairs that looked like just like standard school desk chairs, like just picture generic wooden chair. And I was like, what? No way. How much? 20 million bucks. And I said what and why and how and what's going on? So they were from, yeah, they were two chairs. He said they're from a Japanese emperor's throne room. They're like 2, 500 years old. The wood is extinct now. And here's the part that's gonna blow your mind.
Every year they have to fly in a guy to service these two chairs. But the guy lives in Europe, and he works out of his car. He uses his car as his workshop. He's got a Mercedes station wagon that he has all his tools in. It's crazy. Whatever you use to service 20, 000, 000 chairs in and so they have to fly him and his car in a cargo plane from Sweden to the Hamptons where he arrives to polish these two chairs and he charges them 3, 500 an hour.
[00:29:25] David: I'm in the wrong What
[00:29:26] Gary: the
[00:29:27] Michael: Yeah, so I say all the time in our business we look, we're looking to a portal into a parallel dimension
because we're in the same planet, but we are not on the same in the same world. Not even close. It's just bananas. So yeah, that's the kind of like clientele and kind of situations that we're In nine times out of ten in the past election season here. My people made cocktails for both candidates yeah. yeah. so
it's
[00:29:55] David: That's so crazy. 3,
[00:29:56] Gary: get the job of 35, 000 an hour to polish chairs?
[00:30:01] Michael: What was that? 3,
[00:30:03] David: 500. Don't oversell the chair guy. Don't.
[00:30:05] Michael: Yeah. I don't know, but I need that job.
[00:30:07] Gary: sorry.
[00:30:09] Michael: Yeah. I don't know, but I need that job. And not only do I need that job, but I really hope he like did the classic contractor thing of I'm missing a part. I'm going to have to run down to Home Depot real quick. I'll be back in an
hour knowing that, yeah, that two hours just made him a cool seven grand.
[00:30:25] David: Here's the real question is, what did, how did he know how to clean an extinct chair?
[00:30:31] Michael: That's a great
[00:30:33] David: You grabbed the wrong
[00:30:34] Gary: just using Minwax from
like Lowe's.
[00:30:35] Michael: I really,
in my heart of hearts, Because there's a piece of me that loves the chaos, and my heart of hearts I hope that they were just ikea chairs That a billionaire got suckered on and the guy who flown in has just got like lemon pledge in a different bottle,
[00:30:49] Gary: There was some stat I saw
[00:30:51] Michael: Correct a crystal bottle with just Windex in it, and he's just oh no, this is very special I got this from a mountain in Peru
[00:30:58] David: He's from Harlequin. He's just not a Swedish accent.
[00:31:02] Michael: 100 percent he didn't even get on that flight, he just had him pay it I'm gonna send you an invoice for a charter plane. Don't worry about it. This is how much it costs.
[00:31:10] David: Comes up in like the Ghostbusters hearse or something like that.
[00:31:13] Michael: Totally, man. Totally.
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[00:31:51] David: This is one of my new favorite questions. If I'm going to give you five years and I'm going to give you a green fields, blue skies, nothing's in your way. What does Ruby look like
[00:32:01] Michael: I think in five years, it looks like are so we do two, two kinds of work basically. Uh, now we do staffing and we also do full service catering. But we do full service catering a little bit different. Like I don't own a kitchen. I don't own vans. I don't own these things.
But what I do have is because of our staffing connections, we've connected with 10 or 12 of the best elite chefs in New York City. And maybe a dozen or so of the biggest most, Most good most usable companies and probably 20 or 30 of the best restaurants And so what I do is I you gary calls me and says hey I got a party for 30 people.
We're doing this and this and this and I go. Okay, cool These are the three These are the three people that I think could provide the food that would be best for you this person or this person We have like our primary person a guy named chef reid who's the guy we use more often than not But it's cool to be like, okay Gary needs a sushi.
So i'm gonna go find my friends at Nomlaw or whatever and they give me an exceptional rate Uh, I put my staffing around it. I put my materials around it my bar You know my bar set up my things around it and we throw this party and here it comes and you get You And it makes us more flexible We're not limited by what my cook can cook by what my space can make by what my thing can do We can make you any kind of food in the world like we did at this.
High rise the 65 million dollar place. We did dumplings. I don't know how to make dumplings and neither do my chefs but But I have a connection with the dumpling house in lower manhattan. So we did that So I think in five years from now, it would look like this. We would have connections like that all over the united states And I think our staffing will have grown so I would say right now 80 percent of our work is in the New York City area. Then probably 15 percent that's left is in South Florida. And then the other 5 percent is all around the nation. Like we sent 20 people to the NFL draft last year and put a couple of people at the Palm Springs airport for Lamborghini and a few things like that. And I would say in five years, it's probably a much more balanced ratio.
I'd like it to see it where we're. 50 percent of our work is in New York and 50 percent of it is everywhere else, doing all kinds of things. And then the third tenant of this would be that I think we're really going to diversify what we do, because the one thing we've learned a lot about staffing and about is that basically we're herding cats.
That's what we're doing. We're doing the thing that people don't like to do. Everybody always says I love this. I love this. I don't like dealing with people. This is what you hear people saying all the time. We love dealing with people. It's what we do. And yeah. We're happy to herd the cats for you. And so we've learned that the mechanism's the same kind of no matter what kind of staff you need the mechanism works the same So we're expanding now into a whole different sector we're we're getting we're brand this is like Days old and we're just starting and I don't know where it's going.
But we've been
[00:34:59] David: development?
[00:35:00] Michael: No Yeah, we're starting a new podcast the web development podcast It's going to compete with this one. It starts tomorrow afternoon.
So if your listeners want to tune in just getting up we're doing a medic we've been invited to do some medical staffing. Like finding surgeons and nurses and things like that for companies. And so I don't know if that's going to be Pan out or not. This is a brand new somebody's approached us about doing this a big company So we're gonna we're talking about it. Maybe we do or don't but in five years I think we'll certainly have other things that we do rather than just brand ambassadors and waiters and This kind of thing.
I think I would like to get into some placement staffing as well As what we do now is mostly temporary staffing, you know sending people to an event I can see in five years us doing some large placement staffing on top of that so that's our long term goal is to Just Diversify a little bit, do some different things.
[00:35:51] Gary: How hard is it, or how much of an expense goes into finding and vetting these bones? People that you're staffing,
[00:35:59] Michael: It's constant. It's a hundred. It's a. It's a hundred percent of the time. Last year I used 275 people and and it's just nonstop because we're never, almost never the primary employer for the people that we employ. So that means you'll have somebody and for a while they're your guy they're going out non stop Everybody loves them and then they just vanish because they get another gig So a lot of them are gig workers that do a lot of this kind of work but they're busy with a different thing or they decide, i'm gonna go back to school and get my Phd in librarianism or whatever the heck they're doing or
some of them are actors and they get that dream role They move back to kansas or whatever it is.
And so we're constantly finding new people This is How we find, vet, and organize is the biggest part of our job. Always. We basically do about five N interviews a day. Um,
[00:36:59] Gary: are you using for
that? Are you trying to streamline that? Or is it, does it have to be at least maybe the intro, the introduction could be through technology, but then of course you're going to have to be, face to face person to actually finish it up.
But
[00:37:12] Michael: Yeah.
[00:37:13] Gary: if you're saying you're getting,
you need to interview five people
[00:37:16] David: Knowing Michael, there's
[00:37:17] Gary: find those people
[00:37:19] Michael: There is paper involved. The thing that is. The good bad side of it is once kind of blood is in the water, once people find out that you're, you hire people in this capacity, that you have the ability to give people extra work than they would have had, or to give gig workers another way to work.
And people really like working with us. We've gone out of our way to be a really kind hearted company in our, what we call our ruby pillars. So we have three pillars of who we are and the first one is that we vow to be to practice radical and extreme kindness and respect even, and especially where it is not deserved. The meaner you are to us, the nicer we're going to be right back to you. And so doing that makes us very attractive. And so the fortunate part of that is at this point, they're coming to me a lot. I get about 50 emails a day. From people who are like I would like to work with you. I get probably Less than that phone calls.
I probably get two phone calls a day and maybe Four or five texts and maybe 10 messages on whatsapp a day And so it just becomes a funneling process of putting them all somewhere, you know when you get these just so we've just got a massive google drive catch all you know, we've got a form that we send out google form Hey fill this out where they have to Tell us about themselves and they have to make a short video about themselves that does two things one It lets us know that they can communicate too.
It lets us see their appearance that they're you know, they look
sufficient to
[00:38:50] David: big tattoo here
[00:38:56] Michael: See that they have the right uniform, we'll say please take a video of yourself In this uniform so because people will always say yeah, I have that I have that and then they don't So that's the process there, but it's just a perpetual thing, but it's tough because we get busy in waves, you know So I I might get 50 people reaching out to me today, but we're in slow season I don't need anybody right now.
So the temptation is to be like i'll get to this But we get to the one of our busiest seasons staffing wise is when we get to the hampton season You So Hampton season for all starts. All the rich people go out to the Hamptons and it starts once it starts getting warm. So it's, we're probably going to pick up like late March or summertime between March and may, depending on, when it gets warm and We're sending typically about a hundred people every Saturday and and so when we get there, we're, A hundred people on a Saturday is a lot of people and they all have to meet at these vans and go out.
So if they're late, they can't go because if they're late, they missed the van. They can't go. So if we have to book a hundred people, we really have to book about 120 because we book about a bunch of backups. So if Dave calls and says, look, I'm gonna be 20 minutes late. I say I got Gary there who's a standby and I say, Gary, you're in, Dave's out. We have to have these absorbent numbers ready for when we get to Hampton season. But then that's a real catch because the rest of the time they're yelling at me. Hey, where's the work? When we're not in that time and then also it makes a kind of a nightmare with unemployment insurance so But
[00:40:22] Gary: the business
owners listening
to this. They're just like, yeah, what a nightmare. Clients are throwing themselves at you. Multi million dollar million dollar clients. And then you have people who want to work for you, just calling you up left and right. And man,
[00:40:34] Michael: Yeah. I mean we need more clients. Don't get me wrong So if you are listening to this and you're a client, please call us. We're all ears and we always need great people So if you're listening to this and you want to make some more money, let me know. But but To be honest, what we found is, and we do use a number of ways to vet people, but at the end of the day, the best way to vet people is having be referred from someone else that you already like. There's just not a better way to vet people. Like we, we do background checks when, and if we have to, we don't always have to do background checks on people. We do for certain levels of people that we use. There are certain levels of people that we use that we don't have to, because the clients that are hiring us have their own Vetting process.
So there's no reason for me to spend this money on this guy because they will but and but we found You can do all of that stuff you want and nothing is more valuable than dave saying this is my friend john and he is very good because Dave recognizes that it's his neck on the line now by saying that about john And so we get two bosses for john now, like i'm now john's boss But so's dave because if john sucks You Dave's going to call John and say, what are you doing? I bent over backwards for you and I need all the work I can get. How dare you jeopardize my relationship with that company? So to be honest, we just had word of mouth is the best vetting we get. Referrals are the best vetting we get. There's not a technology in the world that can beat that.
[00:42:02] David: is a loaded question for you. How big, how successful does Ruby have to get that? That is the only thing you do.
[00:42:10] Michael: I, my intentions are actually not that. I would actually rather it get so big and so successful that I can do less with it, I'd rather it get more successful so that I can hand over more of the things to more people around me so that I can find even more things to do because as we talked about, I just have an insatiable hunger to do more things and more things and more things.
We only get one go around on this merry go round called life. And I want to do as many of them as my time on earth allows. And I want to experience, I want to feel, and I want to do things. And for me, that couches itself as work because I'm a workaholic. And so like my dream wouldn't be to get so big that a hundred percent of my time is to Ruby.
It would be to get so big that I can pay someone else to have a hundred percent of their time go to Ruby. And then I can expand Ruby into a whole new thing and end up, having, I don't know, Ruby's classic pumpkin pies on shelves in every Kroger near you or whatever.
I don't know. Do you know what I mean?
[00:43:08] David: a beautiful dream that you have there.
[00:43:11] Michael: I
know
that's
[00:43:12] Gary: thought you were going to say
drive Uber in a Lamborghini or something,
[00:43:15] David: Martha Stewart in Michael Turner. It's beautiful.
[00:43:18] Michael: I know I skirted your question in a weird way, but I'm just wired differently. If that makes sense. Like my dream wouldn't be to get so big that I can do one thing. It'd be to get so big that I can do 10 more things. Does that make sense?
[00:43:29] David: But would they all be under the Ruby umbrella? Are you acting and emceeing and voiceovering and,
[00:43:35] Michael: Yes.
[00:43:36] David: yes. Okay.
[00:43:37] Michael: Yeah, like it's still doing a lot of voiceover by the way every one of your guests should go buy a copy of Pacific Drive on PS5. It's a really great game and we're winning a lot of awards. So again, everyone, it's Pacific Drive on PS5 brought to you by Ironwood Studios.
[00:43:53] David: Who are you? And who are you in that game?
[00:43:55] Michael: I'm francis.
It's a first person Driving kind of game like there's a sort of a post apocalyptic thing and you're in this place called the zone in washington state And there's been like a number of like they've done experiments and things and there's all this kind of whatever
and you run stuff. Yeah, Yeah, you run across this car like a beat up station wagon and you have to like, you know Fix it up
and take it into weird places and do things and learn all about the story coming out of the radio, you know that you're doing cbs to these people who are explaining what's happened And so i'm one of three three or four main guys who
tell you all the story on the cba.
So i'm called, Francis and you hear all the story and all this stuff. It's quite an emotional story It was actually some pretty crazy acting and it was crazy because I did it right there Where those dots are in my living room, so it's crazy to be like in your house Doing all this And then the thing comes out and it's It's wild. So yeah, I would love to, I don't want to give up that. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I Don't know if there's an amount of money in the world that would ever make me focus 100 percent on Ruby, if that makes sense.
[00:45:01] David: Sure. It's just, you're one of the few people I've ever met that has so many things at the same time. Some people would call that some sort of mental instability, but for you, it seems to work.
[00:45:14] Michael: I think it's totally valid to call it some sort of mental instability for sure and I don't recommend it You know, like I don't recommend it There's probably I envy people who find one thing and just go nuts on it You know, like I think about Tiger Woods. He was like four years old and was like golf.
That's it That's what I'm doing. It's golf. And he's from age four or whatever. He's hey, do you want to be a fisherman? No, I want to do golf. Hey, do you want to program computers? No, I want to play golf. What an incredible singular mindset that you're going to pour a thousand percent of your energy from age four to age whatever he is now, 60 or whatever he is and be like, hey this is all I do.
I kind of envy that in a way, but I just, I don't take that way at all. I think like, When I think about dreamwise, if I ever got to places in actual where I'm on, I'm on set and i'm working across from tom hanks doing my 12th oscar winning movie I
still imagine I'd go back to my trailer and be like, hey, I got an idea Ruby could give bartenders like this or what if we bought these kind of cool coupe glasses that could be easier to pour a martini To that's the way my dumb brain works.
And I although I envy tiger woods brain I wouldn't trade it because I like it. I like this way of doing things if that makes
[00:46:28] David: I'm sure your wife really enjoys those quiet nights you have on the couch doing nothing.
[00:46:33] Michael: Yeah, i'm
[00:46:34] Gary: phone, iPad,
TV, and A book.
[00:46:37] Michael: My
My wife says i'm a i'm a sleep camel
because uh, I you know how camels are with water they go
for like days and they don't have any water and then they drink 600 gallons I'm, like a sleep camel, you know I work and I work and I work and I work and I work and I work and then one day i'm like Maybe i'll see you tomorrow and
[00:46:56] David: and you just crash.
[00:46:57] Michael: i'm crashed and she's learned like when I first we first got married.
You know almost 16 years ago, which day was there.
Um, 15 and a half years ago. We first got married I would fall asleep like that and caroline would try to get up. Let's go do a thing Let's go do a thing and now she knows like when it hits there. She's don't worry about he's in a coma It's like you can hit him with a pan right now.
He's not coming anywhere. Just let the dead let the dude be dead he'll wake up when he does. So that's the way I That's like a microcosm for my life, go as hard as you can until you shut down and then do it again.
[00:47:29] David: sure there are no long lasting health consequences to this.
[00:47:32] Michael: Oh, I can't imagine what can be bad for you about that?
[00:47:34] David: This just sounds perfectly healthy. All right, Gary, bring us home. Give us our last question.
[00:47:38] Gary: It's odd to ask this last question, but it's going to be an entertaining answer for sure. What would your three pieces of advice be for anyone starting a new business?
[00:47:49] Michael: Yeah, The three things would be this one Stay humble in the sense that like our our unofficial motto at Ruby is to get, we need to get better every day. But that sounds like a real positive uplift, uplifting thing, but there's a negative side to that, which means admitting that yesterday you sucked, no matter how good you did yesterday, if you're going to do better today, it means yesterday you weren't as good as you thought you were. So that's the first thing. Be humble and always know that whatever you did today. It wasn't good enough. It just wasn't good enough. you're done, otherwise you're done business is either growing or dying. So
[00:48:26] David: how I recommend raising your children too. Just tell them they suck
[00:48:30] Michael: It's just saying, Hey, get better. I know you want a trophy yesterday. When
two today,
[00:48:36] David: were wondering how Tiger Woods did it. There it is right
[00:48:39] Michael: that's
it. So that's the first thing, because we live in a society that says, fake it till you make it. And I agree with that from the outside in. Yeah. You want to fake it till you make it, but also fake it till you make it is a lot of telling yourself, oh, it's just fine. If it's just out here and we're doing this.
No. You have to take a long, hard look in the mirror and say. What we did yesterday, it felt satisfying, but with today's resources, we look at it and go, wow, I can't believe we got away with that. And that needs to be our first thing. The second thing that we talk about, and this is similar, but we talk about living E2E, which is the first time we do something, we need to be effective.
And the second time we do it, we need to be efficient. So living E2E effective means that everybody in the process is happy with it. Client's happy. I'm happy. We cleared a profit of some sort of at least enough that it was worth doing or whatever, but every other time we do it from then it has to be more efficient and, but you can't lose the efficacy still has, you have to be effective, but you have to get more efficient anytime.
So a life spent going E to E to E to E is what we do. And then and then the last thing, and this was. This was a piece of advice that my brother in law who's a really good businessman told me is he said and it really applies to me Because we work with people a lot. He said you have to remember that in business it's never personal and it's always personal and That has been, and I didn't have any idea what he meant when he told me that, like I was in My business had barely gotten started and I was like that sounds like the dumbest thing i've ever heard And then now I realize it, you know that when it's five minutes before a shift and someone calls out and says hey I'm, so sorry, I can't be there you want to make it real personal and say, what are you doing?
You big old idiot. You dumb dummy. How dare you do this to me? You have betrayed me in a way you are dead to me. Kick rocks, but nope, it's not personal. It's just widgets right now, even though it's a person, it's just a widget. Cool. This widget is broken. Throw it out and get a new widget. Got it.
Not personal. But at the same time, it always has to be personal. So that when that person calls me and says, Hey man, I know I was scheduled for a shift next week. My dad just died. To stop and say, dude, don't worry about the shift next week. I am sorry. What can we do to help? How can we help you? And trust me, when you get back, we're here for you and we'll get you right back where it gets, so understanding when it has to be impersonal and when it has to be personal for me is a moving target, something I'm working on all the time.
The goalposts are always shifting on me, but that's the game for me all the time is to do that. And then if I can give you one bonus, it's this final one, which is. Obstacles are always opportunities. I I read Warren Buffett said that he said, bad business people see obstacles and good business people see opportunities. And I was like, yeah, that's genius. That's what he does is they say, oh, we can't do this. It's going to cost this much money to do this. And he says, cool, let me figure out a way to charge somebody that much money to do it, and that's why he's Warren Buffett. And I'm an idiot, cause I see the obstacle and stop.
He sees the obstacle and monetizes it. And that's. Those are the things that i'm wrestling with every day in being an entrepreneur is how to get better at those things
[00:51:44] Gary: Those are actually very insightful philosophies more than they are advice. And I think
[00:51:50] Michael: Oh,
[00:51:51] Gary: that's probably some of the most profound
advice we've gotten in a while.
[00:51:54] Michael: Thanks
[00:51:55] David: This has been more fun than I'm allowed to say it was really great chatting with you It's always great chatting with you. Even
[00:52:06] Michael: I always
[00:52:06] David: more than usual. I don't even understand what happened here He was saying do I even need to be there man?
[00:52:11] Gary: Usually David doesn't let me speak.
[00:52:13] David: And for some reason you thought today was the week you were gonna stand up.
Anyway,
[00:52:16] Michael: Normally David's got the cattle fraud.
[00:52:19] David: Yeah, just get
[00:52:20] Michael: No talking, Gary, no talking.
[00:52:22] Gary: I was just confidence just overcame me. Michael's
charisma just went
[00:52:30] David: punishment will be later, Gary.
[00:52:32] Gary: I thought we were both going to gang
up and make fun of you the whole time. So I was looking forward to that.
[00:52:36] David: That's
[00:52:37] Michael: still,
I'm always down for
[00:52:38] David: He did.
[00:52:39] Gary: could do that later without
David.
[00:52:41] David: I did our 10th anniversary. This is a true story. My 10th anniversary. I threw my wife a big surprise party and I invited Michael just to be a guest, but I did ask him I had gotten together a list for during the the party every year we were married.
This is a long time ago now, but. The number one song that was popular in each year. Okay. And it's Michael, Hey, could you go up and just read this? I had built this little thing and Michael had to tire decided on his own, obviously without speaking to me that each time, not only would he do that song, but he would also tell an embarrassing story about me in front of everybody.
So it was. 10 embarrassing stories for to just roast me the rest of the evening. So yes,
[00:53:25] Michael: Well, Gary, whenever you want to start your own podcast, Gary, we'll make one. That's just embarrassing stories about David Baxter.
[00:53:32] David: That's right. You got to get your own Riverside account.
[00:53:35] Gary: yeah. I have to pay for that. Nevermind. Okay.
[00:53:38] David: All right, y'all. Thank you so much. This has been a whole lot of fun.
