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The following programming is sponsored by Marc J. Bernstein. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of this station, its management, or Beasly Media Group. Entrepreneur, founder, author and financial advisor, Marc Bernstein helps high-performing business owners turn their visions into reality. At March Forward, Marc and his partners and associates think out of the box to partner with their clients in regards to their visions for their lives, their businesses and their legacies. And through his innovative work with the Forward Focus Forums, Marc connects entrepreneurs to resources that help to fuel their success. Founders’ Forum is a radio show and podcast where entrepreneurs share their journeys, revealing the stories behind their successes, and the lessons they’ve learned. Join Marc and his guests for a mix of inspiration, valuable insights, and a bit of fun! Now, let’s dive in...

Centering Habits For Busy Leaders

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in.

Marc Bernstein 0:52

Good morning, America. How are you? We are going to have a really good time today, I can tell you that. And I can also tell you the time's going to go too quickly and we're not going to have enough time. So my guest today, we have a lot of ground to cover, and we're going to try to do it efficiently. So Gary is my guest today. I want to introduce him in a minute. He's an old friend, and I'll we'll make it into that a little bit later. But he is um an innovator, an entrepreneur. And Gary, I have a question for you. I was thinking about on the way in this morning. You have and you have had, without getting into it, a lot coming at you recently. And we all do. We have, you know, we have first thing you think is social media, but we have news, we have politics, we have economics, we have businesses, we have personal issues, all this stuff coming at us. What do you do to center yourself? Because I know you're very focused in the things you do in your life. How do you accomplish that?

Gary Pudles 1:48

Well, I do that. Good morning, Marc, and good morning, everybody. The the um the way I do it is I have a very regimented day. I get up every morning at seven, I'm in bed by eleven, I'm asleep by midnight. It's a very regimented day. And in the morning, early in the morning, I have what I call my CEO time. And during my CEO time, before the m the matter most and the and the messaging starts, before the phones start, I do my email, I do my birthdays on social media, as we talked about. I go on Facebook every morning and wish everybody who's given their birthday a happy birthday. So I'm very disciplined in my approach. I start my meetings generally between around 11 and I'm done by six, but it's uh it's very disciplined every day, and I do the same things almost every day.

Marc Bernstein 2:37

So that's kind of like your armor to deal with everything coming at you. It's the only way. Yeah, I

From Lawyer To Unexpected Founder

Marc Bernstein 2:42

love that. All right, so let me introduce Gary. He's a very interesting guy. Gary Pudles is president and CEO of AnswerNet. He founded the company in 1998 with a straightforward mission, helping businesses communicate in ways that drive directly drive client profitability. And I know I know that's what he does, which is a pretty cool thing to do. Over the last 25 plus years, he scaled the company from a small startup into an agile organization that employs over twelve hundred people across 42 states and five Canadian provinces. Under his leadership, AnswerNet's rapid growth earned the 21st spot on the five Inc. 5000 list, which is amazing. And Gary was named an Ernst Young Entrepreneur of the Year, which is also an amazing accomplishment. But congratulations. He's a graduate of Syracuse University and American University College of Law. And Gary also spent years teaching entrepreneurship at Wharton, sharing real-world operational mech mechanics with the next generation of business leaders. So that's a lot, a lot of good stuff going on. And he's a leader of the bucket band. And I'll just mention I had the privilege of playing with them. Gary and I started playing together a long time ago, and it was a reunion of sorts. And we played at the Jersey Shore this past weekend, and it was a lot of fun. So it was great.

Gary Pudles 4:00

And you killed it, Marc. It did great, as always.

Marc Bernstein 4:02

I appreciate that. I don't know if it's always, but uh, that was a good night. Worked hard. Kess noticed it. Yes, he did. So I did a lot of work between the last two uh sessions. A lot of new songs to learn for me, which was quite fun. It's a challenge, good for the mind. So I love that. Um so where do we start? So let's start talking about you're an entrepreneur and you're to me, you're a born entrepreneur, but it didn't I don't think you set out to be an entrepreneur when you came out. So tell how did that happen? What in your family andor your life influenced that that you became an entrepreneur?

Gary Pudles 4:34

So I started out as a lawyer uh at American and I was in private practice and I had a client made me an offer I couldn't refuse. A year and a half into practice, my client was Musac, the Musac franchisee in DC. So here in Philadelphia, for example, the people know Comcast was originally the Musac franchisee.

Marc Bernstein 4:54

I believe when I first met you, that's what you were doing. You're still doing that, or no, no, that was way, way behind me.

Gary Pudles 5:01

So then we left, we left there and and I I won't go through my whole history, but I wound up coming up to Philadelphia for a job and I really uh loved what I did, but the I didn't fit in the company. So I often say, Did I get fired or did I quit that last day? But I got a term sheet to buy a different business, not the one I ultimately landed on. And the somebody turned the front page of the fax machine copy on. So I get a call that the CEO wants to see me. I walk by the fax machine, pick up a signed term sheet, and there was a copy of my fax of my term sheet on the CEO's desk. At which point I often say, Did I get fired that day or did I quit? Right. I did collect unemployment, so I'm pretty sure I got fired.

Marc Bernstein 5:45

Okay, good.

Gary Pudles 5:46

Well, they treated you fairly, it sounds like they did, and and and ultimately I I you know I wrote down all the things that I liked in a business and all the things that I didn't, and I went on the internet to find a business to buy. And that's how I started my entrepreneurial journey.

Marc Bernstein 6:00

Well, out of curiosity, what was the business you almost bought?

Gary Pudles 6:03

Uh it was a musac type business up in northern Jersey. Interesting. Yeah. So it was it was a similar company to what I had been running years earlier. But what happened was the book that they put out, the SIM, confidential information, um was not correct. So I lose my job the day I get my term sheet, I start due diligence, and I immediately realized that what they had sold me was not what was there. And so there I was January of 98 with a wife, two kids, and a mortgage in a new town that I didn't know, and uh no job and no company.

Marc Bernstein 6:40

Uh just as a side, I was thinking about you as a musician, how you felt working at Musac, given the nature of the music there. And and funny, I don't know if you know this line, but John Lennon wrote a song to Paul McCartney when they were angry at each other called How Do You Sleep? And he said the sound of the sound you make is Musac to my ears, which wasn't a c meant as a compliment.

Gary Pudles 7:01

Well, Musac had a bad rap, but Musac was actually at a time, it was the only way to get music into licensed music into public spaces. And a lot of musicians complained about it. We all know that you know people wanted to buy it to put it out of business, but it was really um it was really programmed to help people and help businesses. So I was really proud of that time, but you're right, it had a very bad reputation. And quite frankly, it got traded by the big-time investors based on the name without ever really understanding the value of the business, which is a problem in business many times that PE firms or VCs come in, they don't really understand what the business does, and because of it, they use their models instead of their hearts and their brains to run businesses.

Marc Bernstein 7:49

It died on the vine, I assume.

Gary Pudles 7:51

Ultimately, it wound up being sold to a company called Mood Media in Cal in Canada,

Buying The First Call Center

Gary Pudles 7:56

and it after gone through bankruptcy three times.

Marc Bernstein 7:59

Well, anyway, so we're moving on from there. So you bought um this company, it wasn't called Answernet at the time.

Gary Pudles 8:06

It was called Teletalk uh Telephone Answering Service out of Allentown, Pennsylvania. So I bought the the company, I bought the building it was in, which was in the then red light district. Okay and and I, you know, I I wound up yeah, it was doing fifty thousand dollars a month and it had 20 employees and and I was with one call center, right? With one call center. And then uh a week later, my then partner came in and said there's another call center for sale in Portland, Oregon. And he said, if you could put the deal together, it's yours. And we closed that deal and three weeks later and we were off to the races.

Marc Bernstein 8:43

And a lot of your growth has been through acquisition, I know. Do you how many call centers today?

Gary Pudles 8:47

Well, so we have over 35 teams. We're now about 80% remote. So while we call them call centers, they're really not because and this is something that's really interesting. If all of your people work in different states, your equipment is in Amazon, you know, AWS, and your clients are also remote and their stuff is all over.

Marc Bernstein 9:13

Right.

Gary Pudles 9:14

Where is that a call center? No, it's a it's a remote cloud-based team, and we have 35 premise-based and cloud-based teams. Today we have about, I want to say 13 physical locations left.

Marc Bernstein 9:27

Aaron Powell So when you're in 42 states and and uh five Canadian prop provinces, I assume that's where your customers are.

Gary Pudles 9:33

Is that is that no, that's actually where our employees are. Oh, your employees are we're an employee-based, you know.

Marc Bernstein 9:39

So you do still look at location from a from a count data perspective, I guess.

Gary Pudles 9:44

Aaron Powell Right. And and during COVID, I heard a saying that really resonated with me is do you want the best employees in an area or do you want the best employees? Sure. And recently uh I was able to save an employee who would have not had a job, but now that we're remote, I was able to give her a job instead of laying her off because I could I could hire her for something that was would not have been in the physical location she would have worked from.

Marc Bernstein 10:14

Was your your was the idea that you're mostly remote a product of COVID? Or you were doing that before then, I think. No, we were ninety-eight percent in facility.

Gary Pudles 10:23

That's the same thing. I fought that until two weeks into COVID. Wow. When I just gave my I raised my hands and I said, okay, we have to get everybody home. Because even though we were essential workers, still a big part of my business is traditional telephone answering service. So we were known as a public safety uh access point or PSAP. And so we were essential workers, but I couldn't put all of those people at risk. And at that time we had about 800 people.

Marc Bernstein 10:52

And how many physical

Acquisition Growth And Going Remote

Marc Bernstein 10:54

locations at that point? 50. 50, wow.

Gary Pudles 10:56

Yeah.

Marc Bernstein 10:57

You rented those, I assume, or did you own something?

Gary Pudles 10:59

I owned I owned 15% to 20%, depending on the time, because I always knew that if I was going to pay rent, you know, this is a show at the core about wealth management. Sure. And uh one of the things that I've always believed in is more millionaires are created by owning real estate.

Marc Bernstein 11:20

No question.

Gary Pudles 11:20

But I didn't want to own real estate at that time where I was I had come from a real estate management company, so I didn't want to run real estate. But if I were using it and I'm paying myself rent, that was a good way of increasing my personal network.

Marc Bernstein 11:34

My own company went through that recently. We were about to sign a big lease, it's 10-year lease. And I looked at the amount of money over 10 years. I said, I really don't want to do this. We wanted to be in Conchohocken, and you know where that is. And we there wasn't anything available. And the day we were about to sign the lease, a property came up. And I said, Let's go look at it. We went and looked at it, brought my partners out, we bought it. And and we had and and we we lost a bidding war, but we still got the property because of the terms and the connections with the people that were selling it and that kind of thing. But yeah, that's uh I you know, because rent is an expensive thing. Do you still own those properties that you had or I own some? Yeah.

Gary Pudles 12:13

The hardest thing was selling recently. We sold the Allentown building that we had. And that was that was more emotional, but it also helped pay for my daughter's wedding.

Marc Bernstein 12:22

So I assume it's not a red light district anymore.

Gary Pudles 12:25

No, no. What happened was they built the hockey arena in Allentown, and so they paid us to move. Uh so they bought the building in the red light district as as part of the renewal of Allentown, uh, and they moved us, you know, a little bit out of the core of the city, and we were there again until early last year.

Marc Bernstein 12:45

So your business, Gary, uh in in my mind is very successful today. It's doing very well. But obviously, we know the joke on the show is that you know you you bought the business and you started acquiring business and it was a smooth ride all the way up, right? Oh yeah.

Gary Pudles 12:58

Just never never a hiccup.

Marc Bernstein 13:00

So given that, so you've already mentioned some challenges, like the challenge of being in you know, in-house during COVID was one. But along the way, that probably wasn't your first challenge. If you could think back to your biggest challenges early on, uh what would you think of?

Gary Pudles 13:16

Well, the biggest challenge was a mindset of the employees. So to tell the whole story, after starting in July of ninety-eight, in in January uh in I'm sorry, March 1st of 2000, we went from a four

Upgrading Tech Without Breaking People

Gary Pudles 13:32

million dollar run rate to a twenty-eight million dollar run rate in one day. And we we grew so quickly that um that that was that posed our first major challenge. But the bigger challenge was that at the time. The challenge was cash flow or was it just managing a much bigger thing. And but the bigger challenge was people's only only no the technology challenge. See, my history has been taking traditional businesses and dealing with new technological realities and then helping those businesses not turn them upside down, but helping them shift. So with Musac, we had two private two radio sh stations, we went to five and then to unlimited in the call center business. Only three of the at the time 25 centers I had even had internet connectivity. So moving all of those centers to the internet was huge.

Marc Bernstein 14:28

Right. So you had that. Um how did you how did you adapt to that change? We have about 30 seconds.

Gary Pudles 14:33

It was called Welcome to the Evolution. So I get up there at my first annual meeting with my general managers and I told them about all the things that I wanted to do, and they wanted to knife me. So five years, four years later, I I came up with a concept called Welcome to the Evolution, where I said, We are an answering service, not a big time call center like you said. We are now a big-time call center business as well. But I said, we're an answering service. And then I put up the websites of a bunch of answering service competitors, and I said, and these are the services that answering services provide, and we now provide these services. So the what I did was I I recognized the employees' fear, I recognized their uncertainty, and then I showed them how other companies had overcome those uncertainties.

Marc Bernstein 15:21

Gotcha.

Break And Sponsor Message

Marc Bernstein 15:22

Excellent. We have to take a quick break, but we're going to continue this conversation real quickly right after the commercial.

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Designing Culture On Purpose

Marc Bernstein 16:45

We're back on Founders Forum with my guest today, Gary Pudles. And Gary, right before the break, we were talking about uh technology challenges, which obviously you figured that out. But that's probably a long story as to how you did that. But I'm sure you also had people challenges along the way, too. And I know you have a great culture today. So tell me how that tell me about the challenges and how that culture evolved.

Gary Pudles 17:06

Well, it's really interesting uh because the culture in any company is either going to be defined or it's going to be um defined for you. So 2007 I brought a friend of mine in um somebody who got me into Wharton, and we we took care, we we were really analyzing things, and we came up with our mission statement, and then we built our core values around um around the mission to Mars by Vern Harnish in his Mastering the Rockefeller habits. And we used that process to get our core values. But what really changed the game was what I call the fat guy blue shirt videos. And I was the fat guy in the blue shirt, of course. Um, although I'm not as fat as I used to be, thank you.

Marc Bernstein 17:55

Um you're a thin man now.

Gary Pudles 17:57

But but we did these videos, and everybody who joins the firm watches the videos, right? And the idea is to tell them a little bit about our history, um, because culture is is really important in a business where our cost of goods sold are people. So we need to make sure that the people feel comfortable and safe. Um my goal was to be the nicest big company in the industry because call centers are known for being for being um humorless. And I believe we've done that. I believe we are one of the nicest big companies in the industry. Are we perfect? No, but we really do try to be a uh uh employee-focused uh company.

Marc Bernstein 18:38

Aaron Powell Well, in fact, that's you have you have a symbol for that. You have a mascot named Pat. So why don't you talk about that? Because that's that's a good I think that's a good example of of some of your culture and the humor and the enthusiasm that the company has.

Gary Pudles 18:52

Aaron Ross Powell So we have Pat

Core Values And The Blue Shirt Videos

Gary Pudles 18:54

the Fat Duck, and Pat the Fat Duck represents our core values of passion, attitude, teamwork, detail-oriented, good communication, and kind and likable. And we call him Pat the Fat Duck, pH, because happiness and humor are our silent core values. And the idea came to me, we created through the Vern Hornish process the core values, and we had an off-color reasonable way of remembering those core values initially. And one day I was, I was, believe it or not, I was in the shower and it came to me, Pat Duck. And I came into the uh office and my then head of sales, and I said, Pat the duck. And he said, No, everybody's gonna know the off-color thing. And I said, No, they don't. Only the only people who know that are degenerates like you and me and a few others. So we introduced Pat the Duck by me putting on a duck costume at one of our annual meetings. And and you know, we've gone from there. And again, the one of the big things that that we believe at AnswerNet, and more importantly, we believe, I believe generally, is and I won't go through it if you want to look up Ben Zander, who is the former uh conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, and it's rule number six. But at the end of the day, what rule number six is don't take yourself so seriously. You know, too often in business, people who are in supporting roles think of themselves as, you know, so seriously that they can't enjoy the the life they have. And part of what I try to believe and try to give is happiness is a choice. And you know, and it's not underrated. It's very important for people in their work because you're spending more time in your work than anywhere else to find your happiness. Now, that means that means finding a job that helps you address your why, what

Pat The Fat Duck And Happiness

Gary Pudles 20:58

what drives and motivates you as a human being. And a lot of the people in my company, they don't want to go up, they don't want to be managers, but they want a security and recognition, and they want to help people. And I am in a business that does all of those things.

Marc Bernstein 21:13

And I believe you're a living example of that idea of happiness as a choice. You exude that. So tell me your why.

Gary Pudles 21:22

My why is to help people enjoy their life more by running their business more, by running their business and their lives better. And what I mean by that is my g my goal in life is to help people find their happy place and to give them the tools. So, education, for example, you know, you mentioned that I used to teach at Wharton. When I would see the light bulb go on, and I can tell that somebody's life was going to be just a little better because I taught them something that they could use somewhere else, not just in their business, not that it would benefit me, but it would benefit them. And therefore, if they could be a little happier, the world would be a little happier. Yes, I know that's a little utopian, but why not? Right? I mean, there's a lot of anger out there in the world right now. And I find that that if I focus people on how on being happy and being productive and being the best version of themselves, that's my why, because then they're happier and they spread that. You know, it's kind of like the folks on social media who go and and give people money for helping somebody out in distress. You know, just be a nice human being. Right.

Marc Bernstein 22:34

I can see that even in the band when I experience you with the band. There's a lot of fun amongst the members. It's a fun atmosphere. In fact, I mentioned the bucket band, but you have another band that probably plays more often called Fun Size, right? So and I know that wasn't named after you necessarily. No. But uh but it's you know, it's it's it's exemplary, you know.

Gary Pudles 22:54

Well, it's you know, Marc, and I appreciate appreciate that. You know, a lot of musicians give their lives to music. And I know you, you know, there's too passion for me. It's a passion for you, but a lot of people who didn't make it. You know, if you're lucky enough to have that friend who writes the hit song and gets you out of your basement, you know, but there are a lot more people who have ridden that bus, who have gone in the car, who's done those things. So you have the angry musician, the people who are really talented but really angry because they didn't make it, but they're still playing because they love the music. And then there are people like me who feel blessed to play with people like you, play with my chief of staff cast, play with uh Andy and Kayla and Rob and the other Marc who is in bucket. And I get to play with people and and they share their music with me. One of the things that you know about me, Marc, is I feel like I'm one of the luckiest human beings on the planet. I'm surrounded by people I love. I have a great family, my wife's my best friend, and I have people in my life who support me when things aren't aren't rosy. And there are people in my life who whose whole life their whole lives are also about being positive.

Marc Bernstein 24:12

And that's pretty cool. That is real. Well, I I believe I look, I I do daily I am statements. I did them this morning, and one of the things is I attract people of like intent whose uh intentions are aligned with mine. And if that's to be positive, that's to be happy. And and you've done a great job of attracting those people around you, which is so it's it's it's you. I know you don't want to take the credit if you're blessed, but it's you attracting those people.

Gary Pudles 24:38

But let me tell you the other side. I have an old friend who I was in New York with him and his family 10 years ago, and he said, Gary, you know what your problem is? You care what people think about you and people who you shouldn't care about. Yeah, you still care about that. And I think that my I got that from my father being in politics is when my father was in local politics, and you know, he would get up there and tell them the truth, according to Michael Pottles, and and it would hurt him when people didn't, you know, didn't like him for his opinions. He's he would always tell me, it's okay to disagree with me, but don't be a jerk to me because you don't agree with me.

Marc Bernstein 25:20

Politicians are in the business of having people like them, so it's it comes it comes with

AI Integration And Human In Loop

Marc Bernstein 25:24

the nature. Um we don't have much time. Let me ask you real quick, if this were three years from now, so this is now September of 2029, and you and I are talking, we're looking back on the last three years, what would have to happen, Gary, for you to feel that was a successful three-year progression in your life?

Gary Pudles 25:39

Aaron Ross Powell So I would turn around and say we have fully integrated the AI uh business, both delivering AI services, which we do, as well as using AI in our business. And we've integrated it in the same way that we integrated the self-help web stuff back in the day. So the the call center and answering service business have been told we were told we were going to be put out of business by pagers, by voicemail, by by answering machines, by the internet. Everything was gonna put us out of business. But the reality is humans and technology work hand in hand. And we are on our journey of making our people relevant in the flow of communications along with the AI. Not instead of the AI, not but you know, my job as the owner of Ansornet is not to tell you how to run your business, but to give you the tools, both technological tools and human tools, to run your business your way. And that's how I will judge the success of Answernet. Three years from now, when you look at Ansirnet and you see we are the human in the loop, we're doing human QA for generative AI. And you and I talked about it, we could talk about it for a long time. Of course. But taking on these challenges of integration, that's the big, that's the big piece for us.

Marc Bernstein 27:08

That's an amazing vision, very descriptive and very, and I know you'll do it. And

Final Takeaways And Sign Off

Marc Bernstein 27:12

we've talked about it, and I know how you're getting there. Well, thank you for being here, Gary. It's been a great pleasure. Thank you all for listening and to Founders Forum, and we'll see you again next week.

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Founders Founders’ Forum was brought to you in part, by March Forward, LLC. We partner with entrepreneurs like you to assist in accomplishing your future vision. Your life. Your business. Your legacy. Comprehensive wealth planning that starts with you -- not a product. We hope you enjoyed your time with Founders’ Forum and that you found something of value to take with you throughout your day. Join us again next week for another episode of Founders’ Forum on WWDB 860 AM Philadelphia, or on your favorite podcast streaming service. Securities offered through DFPG Investments, LLC (“DFPG”) Investment Advisory Services offered through Diversify Advisory Services, LLC (“Diversify”). DAS and DFPG are affiliated entities. March is unaffiliated with DAS and DFPG. Member FINRA/SIPC The information provided in this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be interpreted as investment advice. The views expressed are those of the host and guests and do not necessarily reflect the views of Diversify or DFPG.