How Business Executive Frank Brown Laughed His Way from Sales Rep to President

In this episode of Humor in the C Suite, host Kate Davis converses with Frank Brown, a respected business executive with a rich history in international markets. Frank shares humorous anecdotes and insightful lessons from his 43-year career that began with a chance job as a sales rep and culminated in his role as President of Wall Canada. His journey is filled with unexpected turns, wise advice, and a steadfast belief in the power of humor to enhance business culture.

Key Takeaways:

• Humor can be a powerful tool in fostering employee engagement, team collaboration, and relationship building within a corporate setting.
• Authenticity in leadership, coupled with genuine respect for employees, breeds a work culture where humor thrives and success follows.
• Transformational career growth can emerge from unexpected and challenging scenarios, emphasizing the importance of adaptability.
• Business isn't just about strategic acumen; it's also about connecting with people on a human level and making work enjoyable.
• The modern workplace is increasingly valuing individuality and authenticity, also reflected in the evolving cultural dynamics within organizations.

Notable Quotes:

"It took me a while to discover that humor was kind of a secret sauce or a key ingredient to success."

Resources:

• Book: How the Hell did I Become the Boss? 

Additional Links & Resources:

• Interested in being a guest on Humor in the C-Suite? Reach out to book a call with Kate!
• Learn more about me and my work at katedavis.ca

Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Humor in the C-Suite! If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to follow the podcast, share it with your friends, and leave a rating or review. Your support helps the podcast continue to grow. 

Hosted by Kate Davis
Edited by Chris @ Wider View Studios

Transcript

0:00:03 - (Kate Davis): Hello, I'm Kate Davis and this is Humor in the C Suite, a show about how leaders use humor to create an extraordinary work culture. Hi everyone and welcome to this week's episode of Humor in the C Suite. My guest this week is Frank Brown. He has had a 43 year career in the corporate world and we had a great chat about his experiences. Fresh out of university, he was more interested in partying than planning a career and. But then he stumbled into a sales rep job and somehow 43 years later he retired as president of all Canada with international leadership experience in over 23 countries in Asia.

0:00:41 - (Kate Davis): Then he wrote a book called how the Hell did I Become the Boss? Which is a brutally honest laugh out loud account. A one man's rise through the ranks at powerhouse brands like Kellogg's, Cadbury and Wall. From navigating corporate politics to leading through a global pandemic, Frank pulls back the curtain on what it's really like to survive and thrive in the business world. Forget the polished case studies, the leadership jargon, this business is most human.

0:01:08 - (Kate Davis): Practical, gritty lessons in leadership resilience and people skills. All delivered with a sense of humor and a candid insight. I loved our conversation. You guys are going to love them too. Please welcome Frank Brown, Foreign.

0:01:27 - (Frank Brown): Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.

0:01:30 - (Kate Davis): I love your story, I love your book. I can't wait for everyone to hear about it and just to share the like raw honesty and just really taking everything from transactional to human. That's what I found. Honestly I, I thought we would just start off by telling everyone your story. How you got to be. I know you're retired now but just your sort of, you know, how you got to be where you were and write the book and all that sort of stuff.

0:01:59 - (Frank Brown): Well, you got another half hour.

0:02:01 - (Kate Davis): Yes I do. Let's do it.

0:02:04 - (Frank Brown): So I started out, I came out of university and I went to university thinking I wanted to start a business career and because I, my family and my in laws and they were all business people, my father in law was an executive at Robin Hood and I thought that sounds like a pretty good thing to do. So because I really didn't have any idea like work I didn't like at all. So they always said find something you like.

0:02:28 - (Frank Brown): Yeah, I couldn't find anything I like because I hate work. Always hated work. So what I ended up doing was going to university. I went to York and I took a three year economic degree because that was, that was kind of the entry point for any kind of a sales job. In the corporate environment. So I then followed my father in law's advice who said, get out, start with a good company, keep the job for five years because it looks good on a resume and also you'll get good training in those first five years and then you're a little more flexible about where you can go with your career after that.

0:03:01 - (Frank Brown): So I went to Kellogg's. It was actually Kellogg's Salata at the time. Salata was a tea company in Montreal that had merged with Kellogg Canada. So I started there and I stayed there for five years and three months exactly as a sales rep. I worked in the food service division in downtown Toronto. And that was, that was. Boy, you talk about learning, holy crap. Going through the dirtiest of kitchens and the dirtiest of warehouses and trying to sell jelly powder and tea and cereals and all that.

0:03:35 - (Frank Brown): It was not a lot of fun. But you know, it is a great learning experience and I took a ton from that job. But what I did learn is that if I wanted a career as an executive that I'm probably better to go to on the sales side to those who are selling to big retailers rather than selling to restaurants and hospitals and stuff like that. So I managed to get a really good position as a key account manager with Nielsen Cadbury, which was chocolate bars.

0:04:03 - (Frank Brown): So I ended up working there for seven years at all kinds of good promotions there and you know, did a lot of good things there. Got got exposed to marketing and so I had a very good seven years there where I was promoted I think four times, four or five times there. So it was a very nice career. I left there for one of the stupid reasons people leave companies and that is that another company came along and gave me a lot more money.

0:04:29 - (Frank Brown): And that company was called Nival Sales. And Nival was a rack jobber that sold product to Shoppers Drug Mart. They were a huge profit product provider for Shoppers Drug Mart. The job I had there was Ontario sales manager. So I had like 40 people reporting to me. And that was kind of. It was a. It was a real. It was a jump up from where I was at Nielsen Cadbury, not in terms of the type of company, but in terms of the type of job it was. It was a real jump up for me.

0:04:57 - (Frank Brown): Stayed there for about a year and a half. The re. And I found out later the reason I was brought in there is I've never seen this before. I've never seen it since. And that was that the sales force at Nival had become unionized and they had Gotten screwed out of a bonus the year before. And so they unionized themselves. And the two guys that ran the company were furious that these guys that their guides would have unionized against them.

0:05:23 - (Frank Brown): So I was brought in because of my pedigree, which was, you know, big companies, Kellogg's, Nielsen, Cadbury, that type of thing. I was brought in there as the professional who was going to teach that sales force to be professional and, you know, work their way up to a better job. But in reality, I was brought in there to weed out the union, the guys that were supportive of the union. And so we did. We. For 18 months, I did nothing but focus on people that were supporting the union. I mean, I was doing what I was paid to do. The owners wanted me to do this, so I did it.

0:05:55 - (Frank Brown): And we ended up, you know, and I say get rid of people. But it actually worked out well because nobody left unwillingly. They were all paid fairly and they all agreed to the money that they were offered. So they took a lot of our owners money to leave the company, which. So it worked out well for everybody. I got better people in there that weren't union types and were more professional types and the company got rid of the people that they didn't want to have. So. And the people left quite happily going, yeah, I'll take this pocket full of money, which I'll probably never see an offer like that again in my life. So I'm out the door.

0:06:30 - (Frank Brown): So everybody was happy. But I got fired for the only time in my life once I got rid of the union. These were two entrepreneurs. They were used to running things themselves and they didn't like a guy like me that was a little bit stronger in my character and didn't want to always do things the way they wanted because at times, honestly, I thought I did know better. So we fought a little bit and I ended up getting fired.

0:06:54 - (Frank Brown): So then I thought to myself, where do I go from here? Because there were certain aspects of the corporate world that I didn't like. So now, bringing it back to humor in the C suite, here's where humor comes in. I went to a sales call when I was at Cadbury. Now Cadbury was owned by, at the time by Weston Foods, which also is a loblaw company. And A and P at the time, which was one of Ontario's largest grocery chains. I don't know if you're old enough to remember that you don't look like you are, but.

0:07:25 - (Frank Brown): But A and P was a huge retailer and they decided at the time that we are not going to buy product from our competitors. So they kicked out every Weston Food product that was carried at A and P. Wow. So I had to go and one of my account responsibilities was A and P. So I had to go and try and get our product back into ap. And I had a particular buyer there. She was a great lady, got along well with her and I went to see her several times and several times we built this relationship and she really wanted my product in there, but she had internal things she had to work around, which was management supporting the edict that no Weston Food product gets in.

0:08:05 - (Frank Brown): Long story short, which I've been very unsuccessful at keeping it short, we did end up getting our products back in. So after we got them back in, I went in and. And I had a boss. Occasionally when you're in sales, every sales guy knows somebody is going to want to work with you to make sure that you're doing your job properly. So I had a boss at the time that I in hindsight call Mr. Uptight because he was very, very uptight. He was a young guy.

0:08:33 - (Frank Brown): I mean he was gq. I mean he could have been on any magazine at gq. Very good looking guy, thousand dollar suits. And this is in the 80s, so $1,000 suits were, were something back then. Yeah, but, but Mr. Uptight. So we went to this sales call with this lady who had gotten us back end A and P, which, which is really, when I look back on my career, it's one of the best things I've ever done. How do you break through that kind of a wall?

0:08:58 - (Frank Brown): We did. So I go to see this lady, have the sales call with her, with Mr. Uptight with me, and we come out of the sales call, which, and again it worked really well, is about putting promotional plans together and supporting our products and all that type of thing. And his only comment was, I think there was too much laughter in that sales call. Wow, that was very unprofessional. So I knew now, taking it back to when I got fired, I knew that that wasn't the kind of environment I wanted to go back to. I didn't want to go back to uptight companies.

0:09:30 - (Frank Brown): So I ended up with mutual friend introduced me to a guy who was starting a company in about 1991, I guess it was. And this guy had already started and exited a company previously, so he had some pretty good cash behind him and he wanted to start a company. And the purpose of the company was to bring health food products from the US into Canada for mainstream retailers like Shoppers Drug mart and Walmart.

0:09:53 - (Frank Brown): Now, this may sound like something you take for granted nowadays because they're everywhere, but they weren't at the time. And this was near the start of the boom of health food products and supplements all going into Walmart shoppers and all those kind of places. So we had a great time. For five years. We had corporate golf memberships where we, you know, just did nothing but golf all day. And at night we'd get home and work on our computers and look after our business. But we had, you know, we had some big American companies that we were responsible for their entire business in Canada. And all we had to do was send them a check at the end of the month.

0:10:27 - (Frank Brown): So that was good. But it ended up that this gentleman ran into some personal issues with, you know, substance abuse and that type of thing. And so I ended up having to leave that company. And that's how I ended up going to my final stop, which was Wall Canada. And while Canada just. I ended up going there only because I thought, I want to get back to doing what I really do well. I don't want to go into a company, a corporate type company, where I'm dealing with guys like Mr. Uptight. I just want to go somewhere that I can just sell and not worry about the other stuff. I know I'll leave money on the table probably, but I just want to sell stuff because that's what I was always good at.

0:11:06 - (Frank Brown): And so that's where I ended up, that I started with them as a national account manager, and I worked there for 25 years and ended up leaving as company president. So it was kind of cool.

0:11:15 - (Kate Davis): Wow, that's crazy. I need to backtrack a little. There was so much. Oh, wow. First of all, what a career. And. And second of all, I love how one lesson, you know, like just knowing when to leave or, you know, or the universe knowing when you should leave, whatever you believe. But I love the fact that, you know, you know, why you're there. First of all, with the union guys, I love the fact they ended up firing you after you fired all the union guys. They didn't want you to organize either.

0:11:48 - (Frank Brown): I didn't see that coming.

0:11:52 - (Kate Davis): Like, that is just. It's. It's so interesting because I. I do a lot of work with unions, and there really is power in numbers, and I get that. So that's so interesting, you coming at it from, you know, a different angle, a different point of view, saying, you know, we don't need this, let's. And knowing your job and not being, being unapologetic about it, which I love. So the, your last stop, the 25 years of being there, and after the lesson with Mr. Uptight, which I love, I feel like there never can be enough laughter in. Because it really does lead. If you're going to sell me anything and you make me laugh, I'm buying from you.

0:12:34 - (Kate Davis): Right. Like, I can go in, I can look at two cars, I'll have two different salesmen, and if one is funnier than the other or connects with me. Because that's really what you're saying. You connected with that buyer who wasn't buying any of your products because of the name, and then you made that sale because you did connect with her.

0:12:53 - (Frank Brown): Absolutely.

0:12:54 - (Kate Davis): And you, you created that relationship through levity. I, I mean, serious stuff aside, you know, there's serious points of everything. So do you feel like your leadership changed as you grew up?

0:13:09 - (Frank Brown): Oh, a thousand percent.

0:13:11 - (Kate Davis): Yeah.

0:13:11 - (Frank Brown): So. So I always, you know, and I always felt out of place in the corporate world, but I always thought the problem was me and not the corporate world.

0:13:22 - (Kate Davis): Yeah.

0:13:23 - (Frank Brown): And it wasn't until I got to Wall. And the reason I went to Wall, I actually had an offer for another, a higher level job at significantly more money when I took the Wall job. And the reason I took the lower pay at the Wall job was I had a gentleman who hired me was a Scottish guy. And he just, he struck me as somebody who could laugh. He struck me as somebody who was comfortable in being who he was.

0:13:51 - (Frank Brown): And he struck me as somebody who really didn't care about much other than growing the business and joining the company as a sales guy. That's all I wanted to do was grow the business. But, yeah, when it comes to humor, this guy was the funniest guy I've ever met. In hindsight now, we had so many escapades through those 25 years. I've never laughed so hard. But we were hugely successful. I mean, when I started at that company, we were, I'll just say, X million in annual sales.

0:14:25 - (Frank Brown): And when I left that company 25 years later, we were probably seven or eight times what we were. Wow. When I started in 2000, so we laughed our way all the way to success. I mean, we, I can think specifically because one of our big products was hair clippers.

0:14:43 - (Kate Davis): Mm.

0:14:44 - (Frank Brown): Home hair clipping. You know, not a lot of people. Well, I guess shouldn't say not a lot. Probably 40%, 45% of households do it, but we start. When I started, our company's market share was probably about 3 to 5%. And when I left there, we were probably 65 to 70%. Wow. The fun part about it was we were a little known brand and we were taking on top brands like Conair and Phillips and people like that.

0:15:15 - (Frank Brown): And we were able to do it. And we did it because we didn't take ourselves seriously. We did it because our customers love dealing with us. Not to blow our own horn, but yeah, we were a smaller company that kept things simple and just said, hey, we're going to do what the customer wants. If they want it in a green box, we'll put it in a green box. As long as we always kidded our marketing strategy, you know, you can overcomplicate things and I do hear a lot of people over complicate things. But you know, we always kidded ourselves that our marketing strategy was get it on the shelf at Walmart.

0:15:47 - (Kate Davis): Wow. That was it.

0:15:48 - (Frank Brown): You put it on the shelf at Walmart, it'll sell, you know, and yes, you can do things a lot differently and a lot better. But, but yeah, that's the basics of it. If you get it into Walmart, you can worry about what color the box is going to be or you know, does it have a frill on the edge of it or whatever.

0:16:03 - (Kate Davis): So when you were dealing with everyone below you. So your boss is amazing. We'll just call him the Scottish man.

0:16:11 - (Frank Brown): As he would, he would say it Scott from Scotland, because he is Scott.

0:16:15 - (Kate Davis): Okay, okay, Scott, we'll have to have you on the show too. So, so. But when you were dealing with everyone working below you or with you, for you, how did you use humor in those situations? Was it the same, was it different your leadership style with all those people?

0:16:34 - (Frank Brown): Well, I'm going to stick to the wall years because that's where I really, that's where I was really comfortable being myself. Where I really learned that, you know what, this, this bonehead here can actually survive and thrive in a corporate organization. And that's where I learned that. So I think you can, you know, obviously humor can be risky with people you would know as a comedian, you would certainly know that 100%.

0:16:59 - (Kate Davis): Yeah.

0:17:00 - (Frank Brown): But I also think that as a leader, yeah. It's. If your primary goal in people who. And you use the term under me. I don't even like that term because me either.

0:17:11 - (Kate Davis): I didn't know what employed by you.

0:17:14 - (Frank Brown): I always, I always felt like I was there just to help people succeed. It didn't matter whether, didn't matter whether I was manager, what I was, whether it was a co worker, whether I was working with someone above me. Like I, I said to Scott when he first hired me, I said, look, you hired me as a national account manager, but I don't want that to affect your thinking of me. I am here to help you be successful.

0:17:35 - (Frank Brown): Wow, whatever that takes, I'll do that. And I did that to the, to my, to my last day there and, but that was no different. I mean, yeah, that was my boss and that's probably why we got along so well as he knew he could count on me to help him however he needed it. But the same goes for employees. You know, if the employees know they can count on me to help them succeed, then now take it back to humor. That allows me to push it a lot further.

0:18:01 - (Frank Brown): When people know that I've got their back and I'm 100% behind them and I take them seriously and I respect them, God, we can have a lot of laughs.

0:18:09 - (Kate Davis): I, I, I wish I worked for you right now. Hi, it's Kate. I can't believe you made it halfway through the show. Look, if you or anyone you know would like to be a guest on Humor in the C suite, I would love to have you, so email me. Kate. Kate Davis. Ca did you do anything to encourage team collaboration or anything like that, them building up as it like their team unity?

0:18:40 - (Frank Brown): I think yes, we did. I mean, we did things like, we did some of the more typical things like, you know, golf tournaments and bowling and Christmas stuff and all that kind of thing. But I think what's more important is just setting the tone of the conversation. Whether it's in meetings, whether it's just impromptu meetings around a table in the office where you just set the tone that it is okay to be yourself, it is okay to talk to people on a more casual basis.

0:19:07 - (Frank Brown): It's okay not to come in with a thousand dollar suit. Honestly, I didn't give a damn what people were wearing unless there was a customer involved. That's different. Customer involved, then it's different. But amongst ourselves, come in and do your job and have some fun and you know, we'll all be successful.

0:19:24 - (Kate Davis): So did you find because you were there for 25 years, that really changed with the younger people coming in and what they were looking for?

0:19:32 - (Frank Brown): Yeah, I think you have to, you do have to read people. Well, because we had, you know, as, as any company does nowadays, we are a lot more multicultural than we used to be.

0:19:43 - (Kate Davis): Yeah.

0:19:43 - (Frank Brown): And, but that's only one aspect of it. I mean, when it comes to whether people take Humor the right way or not. I think a more important aspect is how, how secure and how their self esteem is. Because you get somebody with low self esteem, then they're not as tolerant of, of, you know, maybe.

0:19:58 - (Kate Davis): Yeah.

0:19:59 - (Frank Brown): Directed jibe or whatever it might be. Yeah. So you have to, you have to understand that as well.

0:20:04 - (Kate Davis): And did you find when you guys were figuring out how to sell that the team collaborations sort of help with the productivity of it all?

0:20:15 - (Frank Brown): Oh, no doubt about it.

0:20:16 - (Kate Davis): Yeah.

0:20:17 - (Frank Brown): There's nobody that has all the answers now. I mean, to be honest, there were times where Scott and I would sit in our room and go, you know, hey, that idea she had, that was a stupid idea. But, you know, but there were also times where that same person would have a great idea. So.

0:20:32 - (Kate Davis): Yeah, and it's, it's, it's being able to be yourself to bring the good and the bad to you.

0:20:37 - (Frank Brown): That's right. You have to listen and you know, I mean, just because somebody had, I mean, God knows how many stupid ideas I've had. So it does, you know, to say somebody had a stupid idea doesn't mean they're stupid at all.

0:20:48 - (Kate Davis): Yeah.

0:20:49 - (Frank Brown): I had probably more stupid ideas than anybody and Scott would be the first one to tell you that. So.

0:20:54 - (Kate Davis): Yeah, well, sometimes those stupid ideas become brilliant ideas. You never know. Right.

0:21:00 - (Frank Brown): And other times they go right into the toilet.

0:21:03 - (Kate Davis): And other times, how do you. Okay, so within your day to day life now, you've written this amazing book, how the Hell did I Become the Boss? With all your stories and antidotes, did you find going back in time and thinking about that, you were like, yeah, like this is the way to lead. You can use humor in these situations.

0:21:28 - (Frank Brown): I wouldn't say that necessarily because what happened with the book is I retired in July of last year. Okay. And I love golfing, so I retired. August and September were great. Last year I was quite frequently on the golf course. Winter came along and I'm like, okay, what do I do now?

0:21:45 - (Kate Davis): Yeah.

0:21:46 - (Frank Brown): And, and so I started writing just, just for no reason other than I had time on my hands and I thought I might as well use it well. And before I knew it, the things were just flowing out of me in terms of what the stories were and what I, what I thought people would like to read. And so I didn't start it with a particular bent towards, okay, here's a leadership manual. Yeah, it was, it was more about.

0:22:12 - (Frank Brown): Here are things that I think people would enjoy reading because I, I mean, yes, there's a lot of learning in There. And so it's more from the perspective of these things really helped me. And so I talk in a number of cases in the book, I talk about and how I learned them. And like, for example, one of the things I went down to. I used to do a lot of Asian travel, and I went down to breakfast one day in Asia, and I was reading the newspaper for the local Singapore newspaper, and it said, the number one reason people leave their job.

0:22:44 - (Frank Brown): And so I thought, well, that's interesting. I wonder if it's money or, you know, what is it? Bad boss, whatever. And the number one reason overwhelmingly that people leave their job is they don't feel respected. And so from that one little reading, the rest of my career, every time I had an interaction with somebody, I was thinking about it in several ways, okay, what do they want? But how do I look at this through the lens of respect?

0:23:12 - (Frank Brown): Because that's really what drives a lot of these things. When you think of somebody looking for a raise, for example, if they want a $2,000 raise and they get, you know, they get their shorts and a knot over $2,000, it's not the money that gets their shorts in the knot. Because the money nowadays with CRA taking as much as it does, it means nothing. The money's not the respect. It's all about the respect. And so I started looking at that in every interaction I had. I started looking at it and thinking to myself, okay, how do I give this person the respect that they're after?

0:23:43 - (Kate Davis): Yeah. And do you equate respect with feeling valued? Same sort of thing? Yeah, 100%. And did you find, when. When you were within that leadership role, like, if you employed humor within those transactions. And I'm not talking about selling, I'm talking about the people that you were leading. Did you ever have, like, it just totally miss. And then you're just like, I gotta really backstep here. Or you're just always.

0:24:13 - (Frank Brown): You're a comedian, right?

0:24:15 - (Kate Davis): Oh, yeah. I've had so many misses.

0:24:16 - (Frank Brown): Your jokes ever bomb?

0:24:18 - (Kate Davis): Oh, yeah. Are you kidding me?

0:24:21 - (Frank Brown): Do you know? But the funny thing is that I may have had jokes that bomb, but. But I always thought they were funny.

0:24:26 - (Kate Davis): Yeah, I'm like, I always think they're funny in my bathroom. And then I'm like, go try them. And I was like, oh, that was not good.

0:24:37 - (Frank Brown): It's hard to say. I. I can't really recall of one. One instance where I felt, oh, yeah, yeah. It was more. More like there were many times where I thought, oh, that was inappropriate. I shouldn't have said that.

0:24:48 - (Kate Davis): Right.

0:24:49 - (Frank Brown): Less than. Oh, that wasn't funny. Yeah, funny. I didn't have a problem with appropriateness. I did well.

0:24:55 - (Kate Davis): And especially coming, like, you know what? Like, honestly, not even, like, I feel the same way because, you know, growing up in the 80s and, you know, being in the 90s, it's very different now. Like, I've had to change a lot of jokes that I used to do and I can't do anymore, you know, whether, you know, I have like a life insurance joke that, you know, ends with, you know, my husband taking it for the team.

0:25:19 - (Kate Davis): So I'm like, I can't. I can't do that joke anymore. It just, you know, and it used to just kill. And I'm like, no. So I, I get that, like, things, things have changed and it is hard to gauge the appropriateness, the situation, but it comes down to know your audience for sure.

0:25:38 - (Frank Brown): And as I said earlier, for me it was more about the more equity you build up in people by supporting them, the less you have, the less you have to worry about. You know, even if you do go a little too far with a remark or something, people are very forgiving if they know that you're. You're one of them. You're on their side.

0:25:59 - (Kate Davis): Yes, absolutely. It's all about connection. Yeah, it really is. And humor really does bring us all. It really is a great way to connect. And people remember it way more than they'll remember that meeting that was dry. And, you know, they're going to remember the laughs that you had together.

0:26:16 - (Frank Brown): Well, I will say this. I didn't. I was never really comfortable with humor in business until I met Scott and I saw him and the way he interacted with people and particularly at customer functions where we would go there and he'd be there and people would. He'd be like the Pied Piper. People would be lining up to talk to him. And I used the expression that we were the cool kids at these get togethers.

0:26:42 - (Kate Davis): Yeah.

0:26:43 - (Frank Brown): Because people, just, these people that are normally in suits and in their offices and so on, they come to a function like that, they want to let their hair down, but they want to laugh. And so, you know, they didn't want. There's a, There's a number of other company representatives that are there with their three piece suits and their, you know, Mr. Uptights and so on. Yeah. And they're standing by themselves while a group of customers is hanging around with Scott and me, you know, and we're. And we're laughing Our asses off.

0:27:11 - (Kate Davis): Yeah, yeah. Building up the equity, building up those relationships, which is what it's all about. In, in terms of leading your team, is there anything that you've ever like in your day to day life? Whether. Okay, well, let's say this with, with. Are you very different at work and at home? Are you always the same guy?

0:27:30 - (Frank Brown): I'm pretty much the same guy.

0:27:31 - (Kate Davis): Yeah. I feel like you would be too.

0:27:35 - (Frank Brown): Yeah. I'm not a very good faker, so I, you know, I just am who I am.

0:27:40 - (Kate Davis): Yeah. Oh, and that, you know what I think, I think I like that more. So. Yeah. And when you were writing the book and it was just flowing out of you, did you realize how much humor, like, I love the, you know, you know, even your last post on LinkedIn, so, you know the jargon, think outside the box, shift your paradigm, reinvent the wheel. You're like, can you just talk normally?

0:28:05 - (Frank Brown): Yeah. Like, can we not just be ourselves here?

0:28:09 - (Kate Davis): You know, not just. Yeah, yeah. Think differently instead of think outside the box.

0:28:14 - (Frank Brown): So it, you know what? Some of the stories in the book, I, I'd be stupid if I didn't realize how funny they were. So. Yeah, yeah. And so I introduced the book by saying, look, I'm going to almost like the way we started this interview where the first thing I do is tell you about my career. This is how I progressed. And so that's where I went. From then on, it's all hell breaks loose. I'm going to talk to you about lessons I learned. I'm going to talk to you about stories I experienced. And, you know, just because I'm not an overly organized person.

0:28:47 - (Frank Brown): God, my wife will be killing herself if she hears me say that. That's, that's the understatement of the year, that I am not an overly organized person. I am, I am. I think I refer to myself in the book as a disorganized. Like the bedspread looks good, but underneath it's just total chaos.

0:29:05 - (Kate Davis): Total chaos. I like that.

0:29:07 - (Frank Brown): That's kind of me. So, yeah. So, yeah, it's, it's. And that's the way the book is. It's very unstructured. It's got, you know, you might read one chapter where it talks about that respect story I just told you and then another one talking about bathroom humor, you know, so.

0:29:26 - (Kate Davis): Yeah, what's the bathroom humor one? Come on, let's do it.

0:29:30 - (Frank Brown): Oh, my God. Are you kidding me? Okay, if Scott is watching this broad, this podcast, he is killing himself. So we used to Travel to Asia a lot.

0:29:41 - (Kate Davis): Yeah.

0:29:42 - (Frank Brown): And so we. We started going to Asia because we started going to a manufacturer where we would go into their showroom. For once a year, we'd go in. Now, Wahl has an extensive lineup of pet products. Brushes, combs, that type of thing. So we had a manufacturer that made these things, made a lot of these things for us. So we'd meet with them once a year. The goal was, let's figure out what everybody else is doing in the business, and let's see if we can improve our product.

0:30:12 - (Frank Brown): So we'd go to a showroom. He'd have all his products that he makes on the wall. So we could pick it up and go, you know what? Somebody in South Africa is putting a purple package on it, and it looks good. Let's try that. Or, you know, somebody in South Africa has slanted the bristles this way. So let's try that in our lineup. So really good way to brainstorm and get good ideas about what's going on.

0:30:35 - (Frank Brown): So these meetings would take place, and we would have. In this room, we'd have our. The factory's American agent who represented them. We would have the factory owner, typically an old guy with lots of money that owned the place. And then he would have his assistants, four or five, usually smaller girls, because business is a little different over there. And that. It's. It's still more male boss, female assistant type thing. And there was tons of these female assistants in this factory.

0:31:09 - (Frank Brown): So we'd sit in this room all day long, and we'd be bouncing ideas back and forth off of each other. And we might. Scott and I might say, well, we'd like to see this. And the owner would say, well, yeah, I think that's a good idea. They're having success with it over here. And so what he would do is hand one off to the assistant and say, why don't you see if you can get us one that looks like that? And she'd run off. And amazingly, within 10 minutes, she'd be back, and here's what it looks like. And we'd go, okay, that's great. We'll take it.

0:31:38 - (Frank Brown): So during one of these trips, I decided it was time I needed to take a break from the meeting. And so I go off to the bathroom and I do my business. Now, you have to know the Asian diet can sometimes mess with you a little bit. And let's just say there were a couple of. It wasn't the quietest bathroom visit I've ever had. So. And I was in this bathroom. And it's. It's a. It's a. It's a weird thing because it's. The walls are not drywall. They're, like, made up of the bottoms of Coke bottles. So it's a very glassy type room that you're in.

0:32:18 - (Frank Brown): So, okay, I go do my thing. And so the meetings don't stop for bathroom breaks. People just get up and go when they need to go. So I did that. I come back to the room or to the meeting room, and I sit down and Scott leans over to me and he goes, did you fart in there? And I said, why? What? Did you fart in there? And I said, well, I might have had a couple. Why? He says, the whole fucking room shook.

0:32:50 - (Frank Brown): So here I am. There's all these girls around. There's the owner of the company. I had no idea. Idea that I was bigger. I had no idea I was being hurt.

0:33:02 - (Kate Davis): No. No one would know.

0:33:03 - (Frank Brown): So that's not the end of it.

0:33:05 - (Kate Davis): Oh, no.

0:33:08 - (Frank Brown): So we go back to Canada, and needless to say, Scott is razzing me about this every chance he gets. And so the next year comes up and it's time to go back.

0:33:22 - (Kate Davis): Yeah.

0:33:22 - (Frank Brown): And he really is ratcheting it up. Like, you. You've got to. Like, you can't go to the bathroom when we're at this place. So we go back, we have our meeting.

0:33:36 - (Kate Davis): Yeah.

0:33:38 - (Frank Brown): Nature calls again.

0:33:40 - (Kate Davis): Of course.

0:33:41 - (Frank Brown): So I go in and I'm. I'm practically sweating going, I've got to. I've got to really keep quiet. Know what I mean?

0:33:48 - (Kate Davis): Yeah.

0:33:49 - (Frank Brown): So I go in. Everything is a success. It's quiet. I flush the toilet. It clogs.

0:33:58 - (Kate Davis): No.

0:34:03 - (Frank Brown): It clogs, buddy.

0:34:04 - (Kate Davis): I'm feeling you.

0:34:06 - (Frank Brown): I look around, there is no plunger. There's no nothing. Yeah. So I'm going, oh, pardon the express. Oh, shit. Yeah. What do I do now? I can't get this thing to work. And meanwhile, this is the. This is the one bathroom everybody uses.

0:34:26 - (Kate Davis): Yeah.

0:34:26 - (Frank Brown): So. So I go out of here, Somebody's gonna walk in, and it ain't gonna be pretty.

0:34:32 - (Kate Davis): No.

0:34:33 - (Frank Brown): So I had to go back, and as the meeting's going on, I sit down next to Scott, and Scott goes, well, that go better? And I go, no. Clogged. He goes, you're joking. And I go, no, I'm not joking. Clogged. And he goes, oh, my God. And he's just about falling off his chair, he's laughing so hard. So I go back, and I had to go and tell the Owner of the company.

0:35:01 - (Kate Davis): Yeah.

0:35:02 - (Frank Brown): And meanwhile, the meeting's going on like people are talking about, you know, brushes, combs, and everything. And I go and I whisper to the owner of the company, the toilet clogged. And he looks at me, and his English isn't really good, but he looks up at me, huh? And I go, the toilets clogged. Okay, okay. So he calls somebody over, calls one of the girls over. He starts speaking Asian or Chinese to them.

0:35:26 - (Frank Brown): She goes out, comes back in, sits down. A couple minutes later, in comes a guy we knew from. He's one of the owner's friends, Mr. Fungus. Mr. Fung comes walking into the room, and he's got bedroom slippers on that are half on his feet and half off. And he's shuffling across the floor, and he's got a. He's got one of these mops or buckets on wheels with a mop in it, and he goes shuffling across. Meanwhile, our meeting's going on, and meanwhile, Scott and I are trying to keep a straight face watching this.

0:36:00 - (Frank Brown): Yeah. So. So Mr. Fung goes in, and he's in there for, like, five minutes, and then he comes out with his mop in his bucket, and he shuffles across the floor again. And we're still. We're thinking, okay, he's fixed the problem. Well, no. Two minutes later, he comes back in, shuffling across. He doesn't have his mop and bucket this time, but he shuffles across the floor. He's got something in his hand, and we see him put something on the door, and all you can see is it says, out of order.

0:36:29 - (Kate Davis): Oh.

0:36:34 - (Frank Brown): So meanwhile, you're a menace.

0:36:36 - (Kate Davis): You're a menace.

0:36:38 - (Frank Brown): We never got through the rest of the day without. We were just. We laughed so much that day.

0:36:44 - (Kate Davis): Shits and giggles, baby. Shits and giggles. Did you find. When you were using humor because you were traveling so much to Asia, the humor changed a lot.

0:36:54 - (Frank Brown): Yeah.

0:36:55 - (Kate Davis): When you were. And how did you use humor when you were there with the. With a different culture?

0:37:00 - (Frank Brown): Well, usually it was between Scott and myself.

0:37:04 - (Kate Davis): Yeah.

0:37:05 - (Frank Brown): And because with. Between his accent and their lack of speaking English well, we were able to make jokes right in front of their face, Right.

0:37:13 - (Kate Davis): Oh, gosh.

0:37:15 - (Frank Brown): Yeah, we were. I must admit, we were like two little kids a lot of the time just making jokes. But. But, yeah, I mean, when it came time to do business, we got serious. And, yeah, we were very driven, and, you know, we really. We were very conscious of the fact that we needed to make use of the company time because the company was spending money to have us there.

0:37:34 - (Kate Davis): Yeah.

0:37:35 - (Frank Brown): But. Yeah, it doesn't mean you can't do it without having fun.

0:37:38 - (Kate Davis): Yeah.

0:37:39 - (Frank Brown): I won't say that we ran into anybody over there from, you know, like, an Asian business person that had quite the sense of humor we've got.

0:37:47 - (Kate Davis): Right.

0:37:49 - (Frank Brown): They just. They're more. I think they're more focused on business. Now, having said that, one of the things that really surprised us going over there was the. When we. And we started going over there in the early 2000s and everybody we ran into, it seemed that their ambition or the way they felt that we needed to be treated was to take us out and get us drunk.

0:38:12 - (Kate Davis): That was okay.

0:38:13 - (Frank Brown): That was what they wanted to do.

0:38:15 - (Kate Davis): Yeah.

0:38:15 - (Frank Brown): And I think they felt that people from North America didn't have a good time unless they were getting drunk. And that wasn't me and it wasn't Scott. I mean, we both have had plenty of booze in our time and can handle our booze. But.

0:38:29 - (Kate Davis): Yeah.

0:38:29 - (Frank Brown): You know, I. Getting drunk might have been something I enjoyed when I was 20 or 25 years old, but certainly not at this age.

0:38:35 - (Kate Davis): No. Oh, God, no. No. That. That ship has sailed.

0:38:40 - (Frank Brown): Yes.

0:38:42 - (Kate Davis): Do you. Okay, so what benefits have you personally experienced by having your career full of humor?

0:38:52 - (Frank Brown): As I say, the first. The first part of my career probably wasn't a benefit because I kept feeling like I was a fish out of water.

0:39:00 - (Kate Davis): Yeah.

0:39:00 - (Frank Brown): It wasn't till I came to Wall and met Scott and he showed me that, you know, what you can. You can really be successful and have fun while you're at it.

0:39:08 - (Kate Davis): Yeah.

0:39:09 - (Frank Brown): So that's the part that I would say is the biggest benefit is, you know, I. I really struggled with, because people say you need to be passionate about your work, you need to enjoy your work, and if you're not enjoying it, you're not it.

0:39:20 - (Kate Davis): Right.

0:39:21 - (Frank Brown): Find something else to do. And I couldn't find anything else to do. And I wasn't enjoying working for bigger companies that were, you know, uptight about things. And maybe some of it was. Was me telling myself, but I think a lot of it was the companies I was with that. That you just didn't. Humor wasn't a thing back then.

0:39:40 - (Kate Davis): Yeah.

0:39:41 - (Frank Brown): I think as one of the things the newer gener. Younger generation has brought nowadays is that it is a little more okay to be yourself.

0:39:48 - (Kate Davis): Yeah.

0:39:49 - (Frank Brown): And so once I learned to be myself and once I learned that there was nothing wrong with me, I had a blast.

0:39:56 - (Kate Davis): Yeah.

0:39:56 - (Frank Brown): Absolute blast.

0:39:58 - (Kate Davis): That is great advice, especially for, you know, people just starting their leadership roles and really you know, and a lot of startups and young tech guys, I think it's so important for them to hear that.

0:40:11 - (Frank Brown): Yeah. To me, I think there's nothing more important for a leader than to talk to the people who they're working with and as I said earlier, do everything you can to help them succeed. That's all. I mean, yeah, there's so many people that write complicated stuff on leadership, and half of it I don't even understand. It's.

0:40:31 - (Kate Davis): Yeah.

0:40:31 - (Frank Brown): You know what? Help people be successful. Help them when somebody has a problem. Help them figure it out.

0:40:37 - (Kate Davis): Yes. Perfect. Now, we've already had a couple of funny, funny stories. Is there one you wanted to share? Because I always like to end the episode of the funniest thing that's ever happened to you.

0:40:48 - (Frank Brown): Okay, I'm gonna share one more.

0:40:49 - (Kate Davis): Okay. I love it. Okay.

0:40:51 - (Frank Brown): But, yeah, this is not to say that everything I do includes bathroom humor, but. Okay, but this one does too. So we had a gentleman working with us and his. He was a national account manager, and I was vice president at the time, and Scott was president.

0:41:09 - (Kate Davis): Yeah.

0:41:09 - (Frank Brown): And this guy was a tremendous guy. He came to us because he had been independently employed and he ran into some financial difficulties, but he was a great salesperson. And so this is back in the days when him and I were both BlackBerry users. But he had a very unique way of typing into his BlackBerry. He would stop and he would do this. He to thumb it rather than, you know, and he'd literally stop what he was doing and to thumb it.

0:41:35 - (Frank Brown): And he was. He was married to this thing. And so when we hired him, Scott and I both thought it is kind of a little bit of an odd dude. Like, he does everything on his BlackBerry. And I said to Scott one day, I said, you know, he probably schedules his shits in there. So we had a laugh over that. So Scott, then his eyes light up and he goes. And he calls down our admin assistant. He goes, is there a way to, through our system, put something on somebody's calendar?

0:42:05 - (Frank Brown): And she goes, yep. And so we did something to his calendar and called him in for a meeting. So we're having this meeting and, you know, 10 minutes in, his phone dings. And he looks at his phone and you can see his brow start to furrow. And he's like, what the hell is this? And I'm like, what's going on? He said. He says, my calendar just told me, take shit wipe ass. Needless to say, we had a good laugh over that. But, yeah, there's a lot more funny stuff that wasn't all bathroom humor.

0:42:45 - (Kate Davis): I love it. Like, honestly, just to lead with levity and just have your whole career and not feel comfortable yourself until you were able to be that and do that, I think is so interesting for people to hear and inspiring at the same time. I'm curious, because you are such a funny guy and have really led with humor, do you feel like it's the. What do you feel is the importance of humor in terms of people listening and advice for them to just take the risk in using it?

0:43:17 - (Frank Brown): Well, it can create a unity amongst people. Like, I can think back to a customer. I called on that. We had one specific experience that was funny, and this was probably 20 years ago. And if I see him today, that's almost the first thing out of our mouths is you remember that time?

0:43:35 - (Kate Davis): Yes.

0:43:36 - (Frank Brown): And so. So that. That's really a. A, a role of humor in my life as it unites.

0:43:43 - (Kate Davis): I love that. Thank you so much for being a guest on humor in the C Suites. Frank, go get Frank Brown's book. It's called how the Hell Did I Become the Boss?

0:43:53 - (Frank Brown): And having heard me, you probably wonder that yourself. Just in closing, I'll say in the book, as I said, it took me a while to discover that humor was a kind of a secret sauce or a key ingredient to success. And when I retired, I started looking into it. That's how I came onto you. I thought, there's a whole lot of people talking about this, and there never used to be. And now there's a whole industry based on humor as a real superpower in career growth.

0:44:24 - (Kate Davis): Yeah, 100%. Thank you so much.

0:44:27 - (Frank Brown): Thank you, Kate. Nice meeting you.

0:44:28 - (Kate Davis): Nice meeting you.