Million Dollar Monday

Dare to Act: Optimize Your Business Ventures with Terry Rich

July 19, 2021 Greg Muzzillo
Million Dollar Monday
Dare to Act: Optimize Your Business Ventures with Terry Rich
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

“Try new things; get out of your comfort zone and dare to act on your dreams,” explains Terry Rich. Tune in and hear from an entrepreneur who started four of his own companies, was a guest on The Tonight Show, ran a zoo and gave away $1 billion. He was also part of the team that busted the largest lottery fraud in the U.S. history. Tune in to Million Dollar Monday to hear more!
Chapter Summaries: 

Notable Takeaways:

  •  Success Breeds Success
  •  Happiness happens on the way to success. I was missing the deals that you do and how to create new things and all the entrepreneurial things we were talking about.
  • When you find things that you enjoy, you want to continue to look at those and find ways that hopefully they might make you money, but more important. They personally make you make you feel good inside.
  • Finding a little bit of peace in what you're trying to do when you're an entrepreneur, you're working all the time and you've got to really focus on keeping the cash flow positive, but also having time to get away and relax because that's where I got all my ideas.
  • Don’t be afraid to ask for advice.
  • 43 of the 44 letters failed. If I had not sent all 44, I would have never had the success of the next step that I’m about to tell you.
  • Dream and Dare to Act on Your Dreams.
  • Daring to act – it’s a little bit about trying something just crazy enough that it worked.
  • Episode Reference: Turning Dreams into Reality with Shark Tank’s Kevin Harrington, episode can be found here.

Resource Links: 

CONNECT WITH MILLION DOLLAR MONDAY!

Follow us on Instagram | Follow us on YouTube

Terry Rich:

Here's another big lesson from an entrepreneur, 43 of the 44 letters failed if hadn't sent all 44. I would have never had the success of the next step. I'm about to tell you, 43 of the 44 failed, but the next morning at nine o'clock I get a call. Hey, this is Jim McCauley. Is this Terry Rich? I just ripped this off the wires. I'm a talent coordinator with the tonight show. And Johnny, as y ou k now, was born in Iowa and we'd like to do something we're going into a staff meeting, but y ou got to guarantee us. We would be first. You can't go. There's a lot of, you know, shows that are on now that might call you, but will you guarantee that we would be first? What do you say? Heck Yes!

Greg Muzzillo:

Hello and welcome to Million Dollar Monday. I'm your host, Greg Muzzillo bringing you real successful people with real useful advice for people with big dreams. I understand big dreams. I turned an investment of$200 and a lot of great advice from some really successful people into my big dream Proforma. That today is a half billion dollar company. Hello, and thank you for joining me Million Dollar Monday. Today. I'm excited to introduce what has to be maybe the most innovative and surely the most fun, although I've had lots of innovative and lots of fun guests, but, I'm really excited to talk to a man who's been on the Johnny Carson show, ran a zoo, come on. Don't all of us entrepreneurs think we are running a zoo and who gave away$1 billion. He has started four of his own successful businesses. And he's been featured not only on the Johnny Carson show, but also ABC NBC HBO, CBS 2020 CNN, CNBC USA today, and a whole lot more. Please join me in welcoming my guest today. Terry Rich, Terry, thank you for joining me. Hey, thanks for having

Terry Rich:

Me. I've I have been introduced a lot of ways, so that was very nice. You forgot to say that I was a true son of a rich. That was a joke. That was a joke.

Greg Muzzillo:

Well, my mom told me not to talk that way, but welcome to the best son of a rich. I know that's right. And also I forgot to mention and I love, and we're going to talk more about this as time goes on Dare to Dream, but Dare to Act how many people dream, but don't act. And it's one of the reasons that I was attracted to bring you on as a guest. So let's start at the beginning. It's a great place to start. And what were those things that led you to be the creative person You are the innovative person that you are and what led you to think someday you might want to own your own business?

Terry Rich:

I graduated From college, I got into something called cable television. Now all my buddies were in broadcast TV. I graduated in, in TV and radio. I went to a cable television company and the money was not huge, but they kept paying me these things called stock options. And this cable company absolutely blew up. It was the most creative entrepreneur company. So we helped create CNN and HBO and MTV and all these different channels. And it was just such a great creative environment.

Greg Muzzillo:

Yeah. Not, not to distract you, but I also, one of my guests was Kevin Harrington and Kevin Harrington is the guy that sort of invented the infomercial back in the very earliest days of cable TV. And, so you guys are too, you guys should talk. You guys are two great cable entrepreneurs.

Terry Rich:

He was an inspiration because I got into cable television. I, started doing, I helped build systems, became a general manager and then ultimately got in marketing and I was doing these free HBO previews, but then the big break happened and you know, you never really know and it's kind of luck, but back to daring to act i t's, it's a little bit about trying something just crazy enough that it worked. And here's what happened to me. I got a call from, from my hometown Cooper, Iowa, 50 people farmers said, Hey, we don't know how many years we've been, but we're going to say, we're a hundred years, we're going to have a Centennial next year. You help us with some publicity. So I said, okay, well, this is the dare to dream portion of it, where you get together. As many of you do around a table and say, let's brainstorm on what we could do to get publicity for this little town of 50 f or their 100 year anniversary. And we brainstormed all these deals. Finally, he looked at me and said, you're our most famous person because you've done radio and you've done TV. And I thought, if I'm our most famous person. We're in trouble. We better adopt somebody. He said, I liked that idea. So I sat down at a typewriter and wrote up a press release, said, Cooper Isle wants to adopt a celebrity just for one day. Now, if you do that for us, we're going to have all the, so we're going to have all our townspeople send out letters to their favorite celebrity and say, we just want you for one day, would you do it? And, I went to the back those days we had this thing called a mimeograph and I thought I'd, you know, I only needed four or five because I only knew four or five press places around Cooper, Iowa. But lo and behold, I hit the wrong button. I got 44. So I went to the next town, went to the library and looked up all the different New York times, Miami Herald, I just put stamps on everything. Cost me about 40 bucks, sent them off thinking, well, we'll see what happens. Well, here's another big lesson from an entrepreneur. 43 of the 44 letters failed. If I hadn't sent all 44, I would have never had the success of the next step I'm about to tell you, 43 of the 44 failed, but the next morning at nine o'clock, I get a call and said, Hey, this is Bruce Canner. I'm with, United press international. And I saw the deal and we kind of liked to put this on the national wire do you care if I do that? So I gave him a couple of quotes, hung up. I didn't know what United UPI was. Even. I just kind of had sent one out. So, I hung up the phone for God about it. 30 minutes to the second I get a call. Hey, this is Jim McCauley. Is this Terry Rich? I, I just ripped this off the wires. I'm a talent coordinator with the tonight show. And Johnny, as you know was born in Iowa and we'd like to do something We're going into a staff meeting, but y ou got to guarantee us. We would be first. You can't go. There's a lot of, you know, shows that are on now that might call you, but will you guarantee that we would be first? What do you say? Heck yes! I hung up the phone and I I'm picking up the phone to call this farmer back. Tell him, Hey, I don't think this is a joke, but, but I couldn't get a dial tone. I couldn't hear anything. All I could hear was, all of a sudden I hear hello. Hello, Terry Rich? This is Judy Steinberg I'm with good morning America, I have two tickets. I want you to New York tomorrow to be on the air. Sorry we just committed to The Tonight Show. You can't legally do that. She's screamed and yelled and we kind of settled her down, but long story short, The Tonight show came out, and talked about, about actually doing the entire show from Cooper, Iowa. T hey said, we'll, guarantee your front cover of time, Newsweek, all o f these different ones. Well, again, we're daring to act, 43 of the 44 letters failed, but that one connected us to the tonight show. So they came out and talked about doing a satellite uplink and going from Iowa. I'd never heard anybody ever could do a satellite uplink in those days from, from a small state in the middle of the US, lo and behold, he came out and then he went back and he said, you know, we didn't get everything put together. We'd like to bring three of you out to be on the tonight show. So we got to fly out, be on the tonight show. They paid us 400 bucks, each union talent fees. And we got the first 20 minutes in front of Tom Jones to talk about this little town of Cooper, Iowa. You can guess that was a big deal we had over. Well, my number was 258,322, but the actual Des Moines registered number was 12,500 people showed up to this little dinky town. In centennial just had a great one. Well, that wasn't the moral to the story is you're talking entrepreneurship and the failures we did, uh, in getting to that point, the real success was that I started thinking I'm doing these HBO free previews, where you have basic cable. You talked about the infomercial a few minutes ago, as you talk that Greg, you know, I started thinking, you know, we do these infomercials and it's kind of like CSPAN and, and an infomercial and home shopping network together to get people to buy HBO. Cause we were showing HBO on a basic cable channel, but I'm going town to town to do this. Why couldn't I just do this via satellite? So I called my HBO rep and then he said, what do you think I call them, No, man, when you're in a brainstorming session, it's the person says, no, man, that'll never work. Well, he kind of said, no man, but he said, you're a client I'll call and went up the chain to the head, Bob, the head of HBO engineer, and he said, yeah, when would you like the satellite uplink? They brought the satellite uplink out three months later, we did a national preview for all of our cable systems across the US. And in one weekend sold$15 million worth of HBO. You're going to understand how success breeds success and how just an idea that no one thought would work ultimately did

Greg Muzzillo:

Well. The world is full of naysayers and the world is full of people that can tell you why your idea is a bad idea, but those are the people that never do anything. Anyhow, never make a difference. So great lessons, great lessons about just moving forward with great ideas.

Terry Rich:

As an entrepreneur, you know, my dad, my dad was a farmer and he didn't want me farming. He knew it was hard work. You made a little bit of money, but ultimately in a family farm, he said, you know, go, get a job, work hard for someone. And at age 62, you'll get your social security and you're going to be happy. Well, I learned a very valuable lesson in all of this because at age 40, this cable company was doing really well. And we cashed out, it's kind of like a Google deal working for Google or working for, y ou k now, a big tech company here in the last few years we cashed out. N ow I had all the money I needed. I traveled the world with this cable company, doing all sorts of things, I met all these famous people because of the programming on cable, but I realized happiness doesn't happen. when you meet a goal, happiness happens on the way to success. I, I was missing the deals that you do and how to create new things and all the entrepreneurial things we were talking about. So I decided to start my own company and it was fun, but here's the second lesson as an entrepreneur I learned is that I decided I'm not going to finance my house. And you know, I have kids in school, all the things I'm not going to take all that money and put that all in and and lose it all. If it doesn't work, I'm going to take a portion of the money. And I do this with every successful venture. I do. I take a portion of money and put it right back into research and development to develop something brand new so that, you know, it takes the next step. So I took$10,000 and started because of the idea where I had failed 43 of the 44 times. And the satellite uplink idea came, I started doing this for other cable companies, time, Warner, Cox, you know, all of the different companies and for ESPN, for paper you events. And all of a sudden I had this huge business based on a failure that I had originally of an idea that I just tweaked a little bit and put together and took to all of these different companies. And I started this company called Rich Heritage, Inc. And, we did free previews for all these different companies. And it was amazing how successful that was. Well, then I took a little money and we started, an online newsletter E's, product at one point. But probably the most fun one was I thought, you know, I need a TV show. I want money to continue to come in because I was really work for hires. I was doing these free previews. Somebody would hire me, I'd go in to LA and do a weekend live show and then come back and I thought, I need to show. And what, what was the number one show on cable in those days, World Wrestling Federation. And I thought, you know, what other sport could we do this for? So I started thinking, you know, I need the sport that the professional players aren't being paid much. Nobody knows who they are, soccer. It was just getting catching on so I created World Championships, Socker, LLC. Now soccer, SOC K E R because we did a show called Socker Slam SOCKER, Socker slam was full contact, indoor soccer. And we hired all these professional players, brought them in, put them on an ice rink with turf. You had the bang board, hired professional stunt man. So when somebody got mad, they could go out and the two stunt men just went at it, you know, fist over fist, had the coach messing around with the other players, girlfriend. And this show we sold to Fox Sports World and Fox sports world put four shows on and Gala Vision, put two shows. We recut it for them. And lo and behold, we had more hate mail than any show in the history of Fox Sports World. The purists didn't like the craziness of, well. They just want to see that zero, zero game. And I'm thinking, well, wait a minute. Those of us that don't know much about soccer, we want the action. But the college people went nuts and we were selling all sorts of stuff. Like I got busy with, with, all sorts of HBO stuff. So I kind of let that go to the side. And 20 years later, just last December, I get a call and this is why you just never know. That's why you want to have as many things go. I like having a lot of different ideas going on. I get a call from, the athletic.com who said, Hey, I just saw this show. It was up on the internet somewhere. I want to do a feature story on it. And my boss said he saw it back in 2000 when it was produced lo and behold, they did a 27 page feature story on Socker Slam. And now we're doing a documentary on the making of Socker slam and the play on it all, a s you know, the rock, just bought XFL for$15 million. This is a, this is a really cool extreme sport that you never know whether i t'll come back up after the documentary. But again, it all started by failing by, by taking something and re revamping it, putting it together, so that it ultimately, it ultimately works. Now I've got a couple o f million dollar ideas. Don't let me forget. At the end of t he show, I'll give you two milliondollar ideas that I'm still working on that. I'll give out, see if somebody can put together. C ause I like to see other people have success too.

Greg Muzzillo:

We'll have to get there for sure. I think another thing that I heard it early on is you didn't necessarily listen to or follow the advice of your parents. And I think a lot of well-meaning people, especially when we have ideas and we have ideas to start our own business. A lot of people can be discouraging. My own mother told me starting Proforma, probably wasn't a good idea. And she tried to talk me out of it and talk me into staying at the CPA firm I was working for. And I just think sometimes you just have to trust your gut, not listen to everybody else, not seek everybody else's approval and just go For it. Well Greg. The big thing is passion. I had a passion once I got into television production and then I did the programming contracts. I got it in my gut. That, that that's what fun was remember, Happiness happens on the way to success. When you find things that you enjoy, you want to continue to look at those. You're Also sharing something that I try to tell entrepreneurs. I judge entrepreneurship, competitions at the University of Notre Dame, Case Western Reserve, University of Florida. And, so a lot of folks reach out to me over the years and even myself, back when I was starting something, I was always today, isn't fun, but I'm gonna, I'm going to be happy when I get to whatever it was, a million dollars in sales or whatever, you know? And, and I love what you're saying about, and I try to tell the young folks this, now these are the good old days, enjoy these moments, because there is a lot of fun and just stopping and thinking, wait a minute, I'm owning my own business. I'm calling my own shots. There's a lot of happiness in those moments, but sometimes even I fell into this trap. I struggled to be happy in those moments because I defined happiness as some goal down the road. And I love what you're saying about, just enjoy it. Now.

Terry Rich:

I love when I'm doing the dare to dream portion is, and I just learned this a few years ago, I went to Napa Valley, had a few glasses of wine, and I always thought that everybody just had their vineyard and they, they just went out, back, pick their grapes and they won awards. But no, when, when you go there, you realize that they go out with big baskets and they go to this vineyard and that vineyard, they go to all over the valley because it depends on the moisture and the, in that particular year, when it's all said and done, they put all of those grapes together and then they find the one that they think will make their big, big reward. So I like to have a hundred grapes all the time, in a big basket that I'm testing, because, and here's the key, very diverse. I need to have young, old, different ethnicities, genders, all of that thing together to give me those ideas that will make it so that I've got a much bigger audience to be able to sell to. And that, that I think is things that people fail. So when you brainstorm, that's the t wo s tep process. Y ou got a group together. You'd basically say, we're going to take 10 minutes right now. Here's the topic I want all the ideas we can. Remember I mentioned no, m an's no, m an's you have somebody just designated. If somebody i s going"oh","no, man", that's, that's a dumb idea. You make sure that you call that out because every idea is a good one. The lady who wa s a t the front desk or the man who was at the front desk may have that award winning idea. So you want to get everybody involved. Now, once you have the ideas that big bushel basket of all those different sizes and shapes and forms, then you dare to act. And that's when the accountants and the lawyers can say, eh, cost too much. Or, you know, you're going to get sued on that. So you prioritize all the grapes in there that are the best ones, all the ideas in this case, and you take the top one or two, then you got everybody together because you're all prioritizing it. But you finally got that big diverse group of grapes together of ideas together to get you started. And I think that's where most people fail, where they have a meeting. They quickly come up with the only idea that the boss likes and everybody else is afraid to say anything. Because somebody might say, boy, that's a dumb idea. We've tried that. And now you're in trouble.

Greg Muzzillo:

All right, we've got to talk about running a zoo. Tell us that story. How did you come to run a zoo? And what were some of the most important lessons you learned there?

Terry Rich:

The lessons continued from what I learned from either the Carson show or my early days in cable or even entrepreneur. Basically I turned 50. And what happens when you turn 50 midlife crisis? I guess. I don't know. Anyway, I got a call. I thought, you know, I've got all the money I want. I've traveled all I want. I want to see my kids I want to stick around. I got a call from an ex-governor said, Hey, they're going to close the local zoo and we're going to take it over as a nonprofit. And we need somebody to see if we can get it turned around. Its losing$800,000 a year. So interested? Well, I grew up on a farm. I should be able to handle giraffe and all of the different animals. So I said, sure I'll take it on. It was a piece of cake. And the reason it was is because it was run by the city. So they artificially drove the prices down to$4.95, I think for tickets. And I said, we're going to double that immediately, but we're going to give away free tickets to the inner cities and anybody who walks in the door. If a mom says, I don't think we can afford this, let them in free. We immediately cash flowed the zoo. We started doing crazy events. We knew we had every kid. If you run a zoo, you've got every kid from two to two to 10. So you don't market to them. You've got to find a different market. And we thought, well, at that point we called them millennials. What would millennials like if we could get them in? And we came up with the answer, that's pretty easy booze. Right? So I didn't mean to say b ooze j ust as you're taking a drink there. But so we had started this thing. We came up t o the brainstorm, Zoo Brew let's do nights where anybody can come, but no kids are allowed. We're going to sell alcohol last year, they sold over$250,000 just in a lcohol. So it was pretty easy to cash flow. We also looked around because in business yo u g o t t o d ecide what capital investment, big investment. There we re 2 billion,$2 million is w hat they determined. If you're going to add a tiger, some kind of a nice exhibit is about 2 million bucks. So we looked around thought, what do we have free at the zoo, abundant free at the zoo, poop. So we went and br ought i n t his exhibit called scoop on poop where kids could laugh and say, oh, there's what tiger poop looks like. And that's what elephant poop looks like. Well, we needed to make more revenue. I mean, we sold a lot of tickets, but we also then sold gallon buckets of tiger poop. And that summer sold$25,000 worth of tiger poop because in our area, tiger poop was a natural predator smell to the deer who was a natural prey. So if you put it around your flowers, a deer wouldn't eat the flowers kind of cool, except that at the end of the summer, USDA heard about it and shut us down because they said you're not supposed to be selling an exotic tiger poop, to the public. So I don't know, but anyway, all that cash flow, we raised about$14 million in endowment and the zoo will be there forever. And the second largest cultural attraction now in the state. And, it just, it was so much fun, but that, that, then I transitioned to the lottery from there. And, but the zoo was, you know, again, back to what, motivates you? It was the greatest give-back I could have ever done. I had the money, I wanted all that, but now I could go help and see the smiling kids come in. It was just like Disney world. We never had any theft in the gift shop because everybody was there to be happy.

Greg Muzzillo:

Good for you. And, that feeling has got to be a great feeling of, of giving back and seeing something that was struggling succeed, especially that can entertain families and generations. All right. So we're going to transition into, you gave away$1 billion, talk to us.

Terry Rich:

Okay. So the zoo's gone. Well, I get a call from the current governor and said, Hey, would you be interested in running the lottery? And the lottery director retired and in the United States, each state has their own lottery. And so I said, heck yeah. So over the 10 years, people dont, realize there's about$10 billion in movies, 11,$12 billion, in music. And, and I don't know, 12, 15 billion in sport tickets yet. All those together lottery sell over$80 billion a year. And so, we gave a, we, we sold a lot of lottery tickets. We increased the cash flow of the lottery, which went back to good benefits for our state by 50%, about$30 million more a year, when it's all said and done and just had a great time. But in the middle of it, probably the most famous for me, a caper that has hit the largest lottery fraud in us history occurred. There was a gentleman that worked for a national organization that ran the number draws for, the national lottery games Power ball was one. They do that by balls, but the one that he rigged was won by computers for a game called hot lotto about 17 states and lo and behold, when he first came in, he changed the code so that he could predict once a year, what the numbers might be. It took us 10 years, but we call it the$80 billion gamble. Cause it took a, a lottery ticket two hot dogs and Bigfoot to solve the largest lottery fraud in history. And I use it now, when I go out and speak to talk about ethics. So if you've got a small organization, if you have somebody that pays the bill and also does the purchase orders, you're right for fraud. Schools any, you know, churches, you see a lot of it. And that was this case that he just had too many keys to the kingdom.

Greg Muzzillo:

Yeah, prior to starting Proforma, I was an auditor and we would test for transactions, to try to understand internal controls. And I think the best example of what you've just said is, and a lot of people don't understand it and they need to understand it is separating the access to the asset from the access to the record. And and that is strong. Internal controls. Now it can't beat collusion, it can b eat a lot of fraud. And the best example of that is when you go to a movie theater, you give somebody at the window, some money, and they give you a ticket. That's the person who has access to the asset. And then when you go give that ticket to the other person to get in, that's the person that has access to the record. And so the only way, for there to really be a problem is if those two collude together and the possibility for people to collude together is way weaker than just one person being a fraud. And that's why you don't walk up to the window and just give the person some money and go into the show because it's bad internal controls. So, absolutely. Y eah.

Terry Rich:

I learned in all this, there are three things, people steal. One is financial need, and everybody has financial need, but at some point you have a divorce. You, your kids bust in whatever, then that gives you the motivation. I got to get money. Second is opportunity. That's what you were just talking about, that you have the keys to the kingdom one way or the other, the writing, the check, and also the PO in an organization. Then you've got two of the three. And the third one is the toughest one to think about or define. And that's rationale employees who steal at some point have a rationale. Even if you've got all the keys they say, I deserve this. They're not paying me enough. They didn't give me a break. You know, and everybody kind of feels that sometimes when you're in an organization, but you need to be able to remove that, so that the person they don't have that rationale to do it.

Greg Muzzillo:

And I think, see if you agree with me, Terry, I think there's a lot more fraud inside o f small businesses than we'll ever know about because a lot of people don't want to report it because many times it's trusted family or trusted friends and they try to dig their way out of it. But it's big numbers. Some businesses go under because of that.

Speaker 1:

Everybody hears about hacking and the outside hackers and Russia and all that. You're absolutely right. This is just as important if you own a business.

Speaker 4:

All right. So in addition to having great internal controls, let's segue into, cause you've seen a lot and, your experiences are so varied. What great advice would you have for aspiring up and coming entrepreneurs?

Terry Rich:

I learned this from, an advisory board member when I was together with another, gentleman on advisory board. I said, okay, you know, what do you think of this company? And he said, I never look at the, at the balance sheet. I look at the cashflow, I think keeping thinking positive cash flow, you can never go wrong. I mean, you theoretically could always go out and borrow more and borrow more, but looking for ways, you'll see how strong it is. So think about that, of how do you get more income versus your expenses, and then how do you reinvest it to, be able to wrap it up? I think that's, that's probably a big one. Don't be afraid to ask for advice. A lot of people, I find that with relatively new people as I advise many, female new business owners, that I, there's some feeling that I need to look and act like, I know what I'm doing. And all of that I'm afraid to ask. It makes me look weak. If I asked for advice, absolutely not it's your money, go up, go for everything you can and how you do that. And just be honest and fair. I learned that with the ethics. I don't want anybody ever to go through what I went through with Eddie Tipton and the, and the lottery fraud. So, you know, do the right thing and you'll sleep well at night.

Greg Muzzillo:

I think another reason why people don't ask for advice as they assume that somebody that's very successful is too busy or too important or whatever the right words are to ask for advice. And I know I went out when I was just starting franchising, Terry, and, and, and I reached out to the most successful franchising company in Cleveland, Ohio, my backyard at the time. And the man was nice enough to meet with me. And he gave me some advice that probably changed the size of our company by at least 25 X. And we don't have time to explain it, but he's told me, Greg don't sell dirt. And, him eventually explained what that meant. I won't go into the explanation. We don't have time for it, but, but it changed the value of my business. It changed the size of my business. And I thought to myself, why would this guy meet with me so large and successful? And I'm such a, at that time, nothing and nobody in the world of franchising and yet, yeah.

Terry Rich:

Yeah. Don't be afraid to ask all of us love to talk. Yeah.

Greg Muzzillo:

Yeah. I bet you're surprised at how few people ask you for a few minutes of your time. You'd love to give people a few minutes of your time. All right so now you've been very successful Terry you've achieved a great amount of success. And, what big dreams do you have for the rest of your life?

Terry Rich:

I'm still dabbling. I've got two, the two documentaries soccer slam and the$80 billion gamble will be shot and edited over the next year or so. I think the second is I, I really want, the speaking is a perfect retirement gig, because if I want to take two months off, I just don't book anything in those two months people pay you. I learned this when I was head of the north American lottery association, the big big dogs get 25 to$50,000 a show, to speak for an hour. They fly in, uh, I've done some, some really fun ones. I went to Europe last year, flew me first class, paid me good money, and I got to speak for an hour. Then I spent a week in Germany. So that's, that's the ideal gig for me in doing that. I love TV, as you can tell, but I also love family and, and I've got five grandkids. Everybody lives around here, they're close and I see them every week. So you just can't beat that in general, the, the action, the, the jazz of, looking for happiness, it happens on the way to success of every day, looking for something else. How would I do that? And I always think if I were 25 and seeing what they're doing, I would love to get involved in this deal. That that kind of always gets me going.

Greg Muzzillo:

Right, right now you laid this big piece of bait out there for us. And you said at the end, you're going to tell us about your two great big ideas would love to hear those.

Terry Rich:

Okay. Number one, and figuring out how to monetize this should be pretty easy, but there was a small, small town that called me after all the Cooper deal and everything else said, Hey, we're a half a mile off the interstate 60,000 cars go by. How do we get them off the interstate and a quarter of a mile or half a mile up to our town. Okay. So we started thinking everybody needs food, but there's lots of restaurants. Everybody needs gas, lots of gas. What's the third thing you need restrooms, but not just any restrooms. How about clean restrooms? Right? Let's build the largest clean restroom facility on the interstate so that everybody, if you got to go, you want to try to make it to this because you know, it's going to be cleaned all the time. And then you get Charmin to provide the toilet paper for research. You get a Gerber to give you all the fixtures for free. You sell t-shirts. I got pooped out in, this town, or I got PO'd in this town you have an outdoor place for, pictures in an outhouse. You have a dog place to go, but they were on exit 88. You could do signs all over the and urinate at exit 88. So someone who's doing the cleanest restrooms in the world, I think, well, you get a king to come in and sit on the throne. You get free publicity. H e wouldn't take anything f rom marketing. All the tonight shows would be, would be talking about you when it's all said and done. So that's that's number one. Y ou let me give you the second one, though. So mega millions and Powerball merged. A nd as part of that, group that merged those two together, so everybody could sell both products. And so they asked me, how could we promote the mega millions jackpot in a new way? So I'm driving home. And I looked up and I saw the moon, but it wasn't just the, it wasn't a full moon. It was one like a little fingernail clip, you know? Oh my guys, why don't we get a laser or a big spotlight and project, the logo and the amount on the dark side of the moon, the people could see at night. You now have worldwide. No, one's claimed the moon at this point. So all you got to do is find something that would project on there, and everybody would see it at night. It'd be worth millions of dollars. Once you got your capital asset of whatever, you're projecting it up there with, well, I called the university, my university, two people hung up on me. They thought I was a kook. When I talked to a cookie and the idea, but then I contact the University Of Iowa. And he basically said that you got to find a way to break through the atmosphere somehow. But he said, yeah, sounds like a good idea. So that one you could own the moon as the billboard.

Greg Muzzillo:

I love it. I'm in the promotional business. So goodness gracious. Now, you got me wondering, how could we, how could we promote on the moon? I love it. I've loved my time with you, Terry for those of you that are aspiring entrepreneurs, let me encourage you to get this book because the most important thing isn't daring to dream. I know all of you, many of you listening have a big dream, But dare to act, learn how to dare to act from this book. Terry, you've been an inspiration and a lot of fun. Thank you very much for your time.

:

I appreciate it. Thank you.

Introducing Terry Rich
The Big Break
Success Breeds Success
SOCKER SLAM
Passion is Key
Running a Zoo
Giving Away $1 Billion Dollars
Don’t Be Afraid to Ask
Big Dreams