Alright, Drew here. Welcome to the small business owners and operators podcast
where we bring you small business owners that are successfully leading their own
businesses. And today we have hit solid gold. We have the man, the myth, the legend,
who actually has his own day today. I just found out Fort Worth Inc. has
declared that today is Tony Ford Day and so of all days I get to interview
Tony Ford today. Tony, go ahead say hello to everybody for me please. Hi folks. Good to be with you.
Oh my goodness Tony. Wow. Yeah I'm looking at your bio
and I've seen so many of or talked to you and heard so many of your stories of
these different businesses that you've led and what you've
started and been a part of. And just to name a few, I mean you're the founding
CEO of Ride Television Network, co-creator and program director of
Fort Worth magazine's Entrepreneur of Excellence Awards that just
had their ceremony a couple weeks ago, Small Business Administration
Exporter of the Year Award, that was one I hadn't heard of before. You
see you're keeping all these secrets from, you're not telling me all these things. I
gotta wait till I get your bio. I feel really old when you start saying all that stuff. So many other things and
here's what I wanted to ask you because there's just so much there and I do want
to say this so I'm gonna list all the stuff in the notes because I want people
to see this. But to give an idea, Tony for over 30 years has had a passion
for seeing Fort Worth businesses succeed and it's pushed him to create a
one-of-a-kind solution to accelerate their growth and it's called Success
Fort Worth and in your most recent addition to this long list of Fort Worth
focused initiatives that I was talking about a few moments ago. And
really your desire is to coach Fort Worth based entrepreneurs and help them
find their purpose and maximize their enjoyment of life, business,
and ministering. I think that's fantastic. That is, what a wonderful
statement. I think that that's what you do for me and anybody that I've talked
to about you. You know people talk about you when you're not around? They do? I didn't know that.
Yeah we do that. We talk about you and we talk about how much we appreciate you. And so
anyways, what I want to ask you is what would you say of all these
entrepreneurial efforts, six I think, six businesses you've started. Is that right?
Yeah, six businesses you started. Which one would you say is your legacy and
which one, which company, that when you think about it, is like that embodies me
and who I am? Well it turns out it's not any of the
companies, the for-profit companies that I've started. It's probably a toss-up
between creating the Fort Worth Business Assistance Center back twenty years ago
when we lost fifty thousand jobs here in Fort Worth. We were trying to put
Fort Worth back on its feet. I mean one out of nine people lost their job because of
the closing of Carswell Air Force Base and downsizing it. General Dynamics
which now is Lockheed but 19,000 people lost their jobs there over the course of
about 18 months. Oh my goodness. The mayor asked me to help her create a process
whereby a lot of these mid-level managers could become entrepreneurs. And
so we created the first one-stop shop for helping people become
entrepreneurs. We call it the Fort Worth Business Assistance Center. It's been in
business now for 21 years. But between running that, creating that and
running that for two-and-a-half years and working with about 12,000 folks to
help them start their companies, the President of the United States
recognized that as the model for how you do that and so I won the Entrepreneur
of the Year Award from Ernst & Young in a new category they created, Supporter of
Entrepreneurship and that got me on the map for the Kauffman Foundation out of
Kansas City. And they have about a three billion dollar endowment and they give
away about a hundred million dollars a year to support the growth of small
businesses around the country. So they asked me to come to work for them
as what they call an Entrepreneur in Residence. And so I spent the better part
of five years going around the country to other communities that were
beleaguered by base closings, economic downturns, and introducing them to the
notion of what we had done in Fort Worth and creating business assistance centers,
ways of getting entrepreneurs on their feet again,
helping them create bank loans, learn how to write their business plans. Whatever
it took in that community to get them back to work. Because historically
training programs are where people have gone to when economics went bad but they're
notoriously ineffective in putting communities back to work. An example
would be when we started the Business Assistance Center an average
training, for every job created through a training program it cost four thousand
federally subsidized dollars. Through the Business Assistance Center
model that we created, we were creating jobs for $400 a job. Wow.
Ten times more effective than anything that had been done before. That's why I went
around the country for that next five years and helped replicate that model. Wow.
Wow. And listeners, those watching on YouTube, this is why I asked Tony if we
could interview him today because he knows business. He knows small business. He
has a passion. I love that of all the things that you could have talked
about, that's the one. That's the one that is most impacting you and that
you want your legacy to be and that's fantastic. Putting people to
work which is really you know small businesses do it better than anybody else right?
As a coach, Drew, you know that the most fun we have is helping people discover their potential. And so you
know that's why I love being around you and other coaches because what we're
able to do, and that's really what I do now primarily is coach executives and
business owners, they have the answers. Really they think they need the
information. They want to lean on us as consultants or therapists or mentors, and
those are all valuable roles, but I think most people when you reveal to
them that they really understand their own business better than you ever will
as an outsider and they're looking for action steps, maybe to get started
or to get past this place they're stuck, that formula, it's simple but it's
profound. And again, as a coach. you know this, when that light goes on, you don't have to
tell them what to do next .They know what to do next. They just need to go.
They just need to start. And so I just love that part and through the Business Assistance
Center, through what I was able to do with Kaufman, through what we've now are
able to do through the Entrepreneur of Excellence Awards, you know these are all
catalysts type organizations and processes that help entrepreneurs be who
they already are. Yeah. It gets them off that dead center. That's great. Yeah you
described coaching so eloquently there. Thank you. Thank you for doing that Tony.
Well you didn't get where you're at today, you know, you didn't
start here. Tell us a little bit, tell us about the journey. How did you get from
from there to here, where you are today? Well I started out, I was born in Japan. My dad was in the army.
So I grew up all over the world, poor, and so my life goal was to not be poor anymore. I wasn't looking
to be rich, I just didn't want to be poor because you know once you know how to do poor
really well it gets old. I just didn't want to iron my own shirts and you know I wanted to have a good chair
and a remote control TV and all those things, only free channels back
then. That's really my whole goal. But some people noticed me. I started washing
cars, mowing lawns when I was about 12 and turned that into a business. Became a
waiter when I turned 16. Loved the restaurant business. Loved helping people.
So I went, I got my undergraduate degree in hotel and restaurant for Oklahoma
State. Went to work with Steak and Ale when they were starting and learned how
to grow multi-unit organizations through that. And then this girl walked
into my restaurant one night and I knew there was something special about her.
I asked her out. We dated for three months and she led me to Christ and we
were married nine months after that, forty years ago. And so, Jane, and so if you
really want to trace back if there's a secret to my success which is really not
a secret at all it's the Lord Jesus Christ and my wife. That's fantastic. I've got
those two things, it really doesn't matter what
the world does because I don't care. Right? Doing business is important but it's not as
important as doing life well. Yeah that's good. Taking care of our people. You know
one of the things that we've done in our businesses is, you know we
try to do three things. We try to honor God. Take good care of our people and
that's not just our employees and our customers, that's our vendors too.
And change the world. Sometimes we can't get the third one done but honoring God and
taking care of our people are non-negotiable and people seem to
respond well with that. That's good. Well we have that in common. We both met
our wife in the restaurant business. So yeah, waiting tables, that's where I met
my wife. But she was my trainer at the restaurant so I like to say some
things never change. You know so she's still trying me today. So well let
me ask you this, what is the greatest lesson that you've learned in
business? Kind of what would you tell yourself thirty years ago, if you could
go back in time to thirty years ago? You don't have to tell us your age or
anything Tony just 30 years ago and what would you tell yourself
then about business? What's the greatest lesson you've learned? I'd probably tell myself three
things. Number one, I'd tell myself that it's not about me, it's about other people. You won't get much done if it's
just about you. The second thing I would tell myself is that there's a rule in
business and it's rule number one and it's don't run out of money. You can
bend pretty much every rule but if you break that one, it's like monopoly,
everything goes back in the box and you may play another day but you're not going to play
more today. So don't break the rule. I mean watch your cash flow. Make sure you, any
time you can harvest money and save it for a rainy day, do that. And I think
the third thing I would do is I would just say get over yourself, you know
put your ego in a box and lock it up and then bury it. Because ego gets in the way so many good
deals. It gets in the way of so many good relationships. You know we're born
selfish and when we take that into leadership, we're not leading. You
know we're a tyrant, we're doing things that, but they're not leadership. Not real leadership.
Real leaders come up behind people and support them and help
their dreams come true. That's when you really open up the
opportunity. I'd have told myself that. It took marrying Jane and studying the Bible to
figure that out and probably too long. Longer than I'm happy to admit. Maybe
five years. But I got it. I got it. That's great. That's solid gold
right there. Let me ask you this, what do you, you've
worked with small businesses for many, many years, what do you see as the
greatest obstacle that small business owners face and how
do you instruct them to navigate around that? Well I think there's two
things that stick out almost every engagement I have whether it's as a
coach, a consultant, a partne,r we're really, really embarrassed to admit what
we don't know. Especially in the financial realm.
I'd say six out of ten, maybe seven out of ten owners don't know how to read a
profit and loss statement. They don't know how to read a balance sheet. They don't
know what those numbers or ratios mean and they're ashamed to admit it. And what I tell
them is look, you know, get some help. Hire a good accountant. Go to a local junior
college, get somebody to tutor you on finance because business is all, if you
can't measure it, you can't manage it. And so the first thing I would say is get
over being ashamed that you don't know your numbers and go learn your numbers.
The second thing I would say is again it's this ego thing. I mean you've
really got to make a choice. There's two ways to lead a company. One is everybody
in your company is filling a hole and they're just another part of the machine.
I'm not judging. I mean there's a lot of quote unquote successful companies
that manage their people that way. The other way is, this is my
responsibility, if you're a believer then it's probably this is my ministry
field. God's put them in our path to take care of them, whatever that means.
You know like we've had abused spouses that we've had to put into apartments,
we've had to put people in rehab, we've done all kinds of crazy stuff, loan money
it's the normal stuff. But you make a decision as a leader and as an owner
which way you're going to treat your people.
And conversely, I think they make a choice about which way they're gonna
treat you and your business. And we've always found that if we extend trust and
respect to our people first before we ever expect them to earn it
then they extend it right back to us in the way they do their jobs, they don't
steal, they don't cheat on their hours. They do a good job for us. That's good.
That's good. What was it Zig Ziglar said if you meet other people's needs,
or take care of them, they'll take care of you, right? Something to that
effect and that's what you were just sharing. You've lived it out.
That's great. Well you alluded to personal
development. You said if you can't read a profit and loss sheet go to a junior
college or you know, you could probably find a YouTube channel now or a home study.
How has personal development and
continued learning impacted your life? I know we both engage in that. We both help
and do trainings and leadership development kind of stuff. How have you
taken advantage of personal development in your life? I've been very fortunate in that because I've owned most
of my own companies, I've had the opportunity to go to seminars, trainings,
certifications, my master's work was in education so, you know, I like to learn.
What I have found that separates out the really world-class entrepreneurs
versus just good, nothing wrong with them they're just not world-class, and that is
their reading. They're readers. And I don't have a problem with people that do
audiobooks that's fine but, I mean, I read probably six to eight books a month.
And oddly enough I don't read very many business books. I read some parts of
business books but I mean I read technical books, I read fiction, a lot of
fiction because good authors are really psychologists who know how to write.
They develop a plot around the way people behave and the more you read
about the way people behave, the more you see it in the people around you, at work and
in your own behavior. You can identify patterns of behavior so when you see
somebody acting a certain way all of a sudden you realize there's
something wrong in their life. They're not telling me what's wrong but there is something. And when
there's something wrong then that means that's slowing them down. And so whether
you're the one that intervenes and helps them or you get them some help,
they don't just keep trudging along losing momentum and ultimately maybe
even getting themselves fired over something that's silly because you've
recognized it way back here in a place where you can help them. I get that
out of the reading I do. I see the patterns in people. Wow. That's
huge. I mean and reading that much. With audiobooks I work at getting
five a month done. So you are just blowing me out of the water there. And I
know that you've gone through speaker training, we've had conversations,
certifications, licensing, you know, coaching, all that kind of stuff. You're a
constant learner. You're constantly learning and developing yourself and
I really admire that about you Tony. And all that reading as well, I didn't
know that. That's fantastic. My wife and I are about halfway through a biblical counseling course that takes
about three years to get certified. I came here to go, I mean I went to Seminary
for two and a half years when we came here thirty-five years ago. But I found that a lot of the
business coaching that I do always seems to end up in marriage counseling,
family counseling, something and while, this is my belief system, but
while clinical psychology can bring relief, I happen to believe that the
Bible can bring healing. So we're equipping ourselves to use that
tool in these other settings to help people get healed from whatever misery
they're in that is slowing them down. That is so good. That's so good Tony. I mean, wow. And
almost completing a three-year program, that's great. I love that relief verses
healing. That's fantastic. Well Tony tell us something
you're working on right now. What are you excited about? What's kind of
got you excited right now? Well this whole coaching thing, and we shared this at breakfast the other day, I
believe that everybody that wants to be excellent needs somebody that's challenging them,
asking them what their goals are, and helping them clarify that. You know
coaching really does two things, it brings clarity and then it brings action
steps. You know it's just that simple but it's very profound.
It's simple but it's not easy, okay, and a talented coach, somebody like you that's
submitted themselves to a lot of training, that's got a lot of hours, you
know, that's doing this kind of stuff, I would really like to see, at
least in the Fort Worth community, that's why I call my company Success Fort Worth,
be kind of a clearing center so that people can find a great coach. You know I
mean, I have a limited span. I can take on a certain number of people that I work
with at a time. And even then somebody might contact me and in interviewing
them I realize I'm not the best coach for them. This is not the right
match. Because it's a match and you know that. It's a personality thing. So I
want to know the other coaches like you and others that are really good, that have
committed themselves to the craft, that know their stuff, that won't, you know, embarrass
anybody and will do good work, and I want them to be able to call Success Fort Worth
and have me say, hey listen I hear what you're trying to do. I'm not the best
choice. Call my friend Drew, you know, call Sally, call Bill. I think for what you're
trying to do, they are world-class at it. In fact, I'll just bring you to
coffee. I'll introduce you personally. Now getting these
entrepreneurs what they need as soon as possible because they could be impacting
10, 15, a hundred people by not being able to get what they need.
The goal is get everybody what they need through coaching. That's my
goal now. That's my new mission. That's great. That is exciting. I'm excited
hearing about it and hearing about it again
And people can connect with you at successfortworth.com and you, through
that, you have coaching services that you provide.
Tell us who is your ideal client? More executive coaching, am i right on
that? Well you know a good coach can coach anybody but a lot of times a client will want to be coached by
somebody that's had similar life circumstances as they've had. My life
has pretty much been as a small business owner, creator,
my whole life. Obviously I've sat in the big chairs, the CEO of my own companies and
these nonprofits. So most of my customers are business owners, executives,
people that are on an executive team. But I have pastors and I have other
people that I work with. I typically work with leaders of some kind. Yeah
that's great. That's great. And I'm gonna have all the contact information with
the podcast and on the YouTube and we'll have links where you can connect. You can
go to successfortworth.com. You can find out all about Tony and connect with
him if you are in need of his services. Which like we said at
breakfast the other day, you want to see a world, a Fort Worth, where
everybody, the normal is that everybody has a coach. If all of
us have greater clarity of our gifts, talents, and abilities, and then we have
someone holding us accountable to take action, I mean who wouldn't want that,
right? The best thing I tell people is I have a coach. Yeah. Yeah me too. Absolutely. Absolutely. You're believer,
right? Well let me let me ask you some rapid-fire questions. Are you
up for some rapid-fire questions as we close out? You bet. Okay now I switch them up
okay? I got to keep you on your toes. Alright this one you might
have known about though, what's the last thing you watched on TV and why did you
choose to watch it? I watched a special on artificial intelligence and how
robots are starting to duplicate robots. Oh my goodness. Which is a little scary.
Terminator right? Yeah kind of. Oh my goodness. But we're getting there and it's
gonna change the society in a lot of ways. Right? I think chat bots are like the new
thing for social media marketing so that's gonna come around.
Alright, this is a cool one. So if a movie was made of your life what genre
would it be and who would play you. Wow. My first
reaction would be it would be a comedy because most of the businesses that I've
started came out of nowhere and they weren't my idea. I just kinda fell into
them and they worked. It would be a mystery for sure because I don't know how this thing ends. I really don't.
And it would be a love story because of Jane and Jesus. As far as the person that played me I'm
thinking, you know, somebody good-looking like you or maybe Brad Pitt. I knew you were gonna say Brad
Pitt. Everybody says Brad Pitt. Everybody. Because we both have hair like Brad Pitt right? We always want to.
Alright, well here's one, what is one thing that annoys you the most? Apathy. Apathy.
I can't do anything with apathy. Apathy is, I've given up. Apathy is, I don't
believe in the future anymore. Apathy is fear has frozen me. I can't do anything
with apathy. Apathy is jello. Apathy doesn't have a shape. Apathy doesn't have a future. I can I do
pretty much anything with anything else. Apathy's just, I don't have a starting point.
I could see, I'm sorry I didn't mean to get you, you know, frustrated with that
question. I'll move on. Okay so fill in the blank, when I dance I look like... Oh
gosh you're talking to a guy with an artificial knee and artificial back, my gosh. I look
really slow. I don't move a whole lot. Okay. How about this one, on a scale of 1 to 10 how cool are you?
Hmm. Well see now I think I'm pretty cool because I work so hard at it.
But on a one to ten, you know, with the skinny jeans and the whole bit other
people wear, I'm probably about a 6. Okay, okay so you only have a couple pairs of
skinny jeans is what you're saying. I only wear them around the house. Okay.
And then last one, with Ride TV, I mean I have to ask this question. Would you rather
fight a horse sized duck or 100 duck sized horses. You know I think I would
rather run the other direction and live to fight another day. I don't think I could win a fight either way with those.
Okay, alright. Hey Tony thank you so much for letting me interview you today and
it has really been a joy. This was the small business owners and operators
podcast. Thank you for watching. Thank you for listening on the podcast and we want
to bring you great small business owners and operators that can just
really give you wisdom and insights on how to lead your business. Alright,
thank you so much for joining in.
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