Leading With Talent: What Entrepreneurs Can Learn From Broadway

Dan Sullivan: Hi everyone. This is Dan Sullivan, and we’re here for another podcast episode of “Anything and Everything”.
 
And this is a very exciting week because Jeff Madoff—and we’ve been informing people over a period of three years, at least, of the progress of his play, Personality, and the 3rd jump is next summer… Twelve weeks, is it? Do you have 12 weeks?
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yes.
 
Dan Sullivan: Twelve weeks in Chicago at a wonderfully renovated, I guess early 20th century theater, The Studebaker Theater, which is, from Jeff’s comments, because he just came back from Chicago for audition week.
 
So just walk us through what audition week is, because you had auditions for the first workshop presentations in New York City, which Babs and I were invited to, probably slightly contrary to union rules, and we were invited in because you got to know people. And I know Jeff.
 
And the other one is the opening the real opening on the road, which was in Philadelphia last February, if I believe.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: March.
 
Dan Sullivan: March. This is big time, big time. Chicago’s a great theater city, great talent pool, both on the acting side and certainly on the music side. And you’ve just went there.
 
So how do you approach this? Because you know you’re moving up in league every time you take another jump with it, and probably 100 people start off with a play and we’re down under 10, probably the number of plays that gets started as an idea that are now at the stage that you’re at right now.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: We’ve actually had the table-read, which was first, and the first time it did any kind of auditions, although they were very limited, but it got people from Hamilton because they like the script, pass it on to some other people who show up in my office for Lloyd and myself, my wife, and maybe five other people whose opinions we wanted, we did a table-read after those auditions.
 
Then we did the 29-hour, where we performed in front of 100-plus people at the Orbach Theater. That was a whole starting over again, finding talent and auditioning. Then the workshop. Then Malvern. And now the fifth incarnation is for Chicago.
 
And the audition process is quite fascinating. You know, it starts off—these days, didn’t used to be the case—and this did happen before COVID also, where you get links and some actors already have things they submit for auditions depending on the play, all the ones will record music if it’s a musical that relates to the play, or they’ll just send you the songs that, one or two numbers that they think showcases their talents. They’ll they will read the sides from the play, and the sides are basically pages from the script, and so we’ll if, depending on who they’re auditioning for, they’ll read for that.
 
And then what we went in for this past week was we did an elimination. So there were a number of people that we saw on video that we didn’t feel were right, so we didn’t invite them in-person. But we did… So I had the first wave was probably 88 people, at least, something like that, and we had auditions for probably 25, 30, because it’s hard to tell on video. That’s the worst way for the talent and for us, you know, to really tell what they’ve got.
 
I actually started dance auditions on Monday. In our case, it requires a collaboration among a bunch of people. So there’s me as the playwright. There is Sheldon Epps, who is our director, who’s evaluating the talent in a particular way. Then he and I collaborate a lot on that, what did we like, what sucks. And then we have them read whatever.
 
Shelton Becton, the musical director. And it’s so interesting to watch Shelton, because I don’t know his world as well as I know the other.
 
And then similarly with Edgar Godineaux, our choreographer. And so he started Monday before the other three of us even got there because he started with dance movement auditions. So he got there a day ahead of us because that would eliminate certain people we wouldn’t need to read them if they couldn’t do-
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: --the required moves.
 
Dan Sullivan: One of the things is that, from a talent standpoint, if I’m looking at it from the actors, they’ve got to do three things: They’ve got to be able to be a good actor, they’ve got to be able to be a good singer, and they have to be a good dancer. And so musicals are trifecta of talent. I mean, there’s lots of great actors who can’t do the other two, and there’s dancers who can’t do the other two, and there are singers who can’t do the other two, right?
 
Jeffrey Madoff: That’s right. And the term in the theater is “triple threat.”
 
And I think that all of the people listening know who Hugh Jackman is. Who can play Wolverine and be menacing and dark. But he is currently starring in Music Man. He’s a tremendous singer and dancer and actor, and he has that X-Factor that we need in our two Lloyds, which is that there’s a charisma. Because there are people that can sing, dance, and act, who are quite good at it, but they don’t have the star quality.
 
Dan Sullivan: The thing is that, you know, explain who Lloyd is, because we’ll probably have new listeners today. So this is a historical musical, in the sense is based on the life of a actual crossover artist, who actually is probably the bridge from a previous genre of music to Rock’n’Roll in the very early 1950s.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Right, 1952. Lloyd recorded his song called” Lawdie Miss Claudie”, which is considered one of the cornerstone songs of Rock’n’Roll. The music business at that time was an adult business. Teenagers didn’t buy records and there were independent Blues and jazz records.
 
Dan Sullivan: Adults, being people who are younger than you and me, right?
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yes, yes, we’re not addressing the senior community here. Yeah, it’s weird when you’re on the inside looking out and you forget your age. But that’s also a good thing, as I often say “I have aged, I just haven’t matured.”
 
Lloyd’s recording of “Lawdie Miss Claudie” was the catalyst for a seismic change in the music industry. It was the first record by a teenager that sold over 1,000,000 copies. Portable record players—you know, you think about our grandparents age and you know, Dan, you’d go to their home and see that big piece of furniture.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, they were 78 when I was growing up. The ones that were as fragile as china.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yes. And The thing is that they would have five of these 78s, which are like that big around, in a sleeve in a binder which is why they were called “record albums,” because it was actually an album of records that would be an opera or classical music or something.
 
Lloyd entered the world at a time when the youth movement—he was a catalyst in that the birth of Rock’n’Roll, he was a significant catalyst in that. And the civil rights movement. And all these things were converging at a unique time in history.
 
And he was the first teenager to sell over 1,000,000 records. He was the first musician of any color to start his own label. He was an entrepreneur. He was the first Black to open a nightclub below Harlem, which is across the street from the Ed Sullivan Theater, where “The Colbert Show” is now. And that was a famous nightclub before Lloyd took it over and called it The Turntable. So he was an entrepreneur. He was a recording artist. He was an innovator.
 
Dan Sullivan: And he opened the doors for a lot of other talent coming up after him, too.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: He did, and not just Black talent. Also young, ‘cause that just wasn’t really a thing. But then it caught fire.
 
And you know, a lot of America thinks, you know, that Elvis was the king of Rock’n’Roll. Elvis did not think he was the king of Rock’n’Roll. And one of the first big hits that Elvis had was “Lawdie Miss Claudie”, and there’s a really cool version you can look at on YouTube, which is Elvis’s comeback concert. It’s in 1968, and he did an acoustic version of it. This is fabulous.
 
So Lloyd is a really interesting character. I had done a documentary about him and got to know him. We became very, very close friends and I thought,”Wow, what a compelling story. This is a story that needs to be told.” And fortunately, you got to meet him, Dan.
 
Dan Sullivan: Dad, I did.
 
It was interesting because we both had Army experience in South Korea. He was there during the Korean War in the early 50s, but he was in the same unit as I was. I was there in the mid-60s. We talked about it, and he traveled around Korea, and we had been to a lot of the same places. But you know, I’m talking to somebody who, when I met him, I think was probably 87, maybe 86, 87, I don’t know how old he was, because he just died in the spring of, 91 was it.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: He died in May of 21.
 
Dan Sullivan: Twenty-one, 21 yeah, yeah.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: You first met him-
 
Dan Sullivan: At the workshops. I think it was workshops.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah. Yeah. And I think he was 84, 85 then.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, yeah. Had all his marbles and had never ruined himself with all sorts of side activities.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Well, that’s right. That’s right. And was very, very sharp up until the end, and an amazing memory. It was phenomenal to have primary resource at my disposal in telling his story. And I recorded him for 20 some hours over a period of several days.
 
We became so close. He’s such a great guy. And one of the things about it is he’s an unsung hero. People don’t know this story, and the people come away with it “I didn’t know that.” You know, and they Google him. listen to his music. It’s a lot of fun.
 
But you know, you and I have talked a number of times about, of course, business and collaborations, and we both agree you loved theater not just as an observer. It was something you even thought of pursuing yourself, and that collaboration in the arts has more in common with business than it does different. It’s kind of an interesting springboard, or example, what I just was through this past week in terms of, you know, how do you make decisions, how do you make sure everybody is aligned, all of those things in order to progress, because, yeah, we’ve now entered that small percentage of plays that makes it to a full-blown commercial production in a major city.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Well, the other thing is that you have the talent audition, but you’re actually a rookie. So each stage here is your first time with the production. You have the, you know, a whole team around you, at the director level, the choreography level, the musical level. And these people have many, many productions behind them. And you’ve got a lot of productions from video standpoint and everything else.
 
But it’s interesting how you’re approaching this, because there’s a lot of “wow factor” at each jump you make along this factor for you. You have no grounds for being blasé about anything.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah, you know, it’s-
 
Dan Sullivan: I mean, you’re you’re a veteran of producing great content. You’re a veteran of going back 50 years of being in the big leagues in terms of things that you were doing. But this is different. You’re just telling him about your going into this completely renovated theater that is 100 years old or more and just saying, “Wow, that’s a lot of seats.”
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah. (Laughs)
 
No, you’re right. And. I it’s very cool. Is it daunting? Yes. And yeah, because there’s a lot of people, more and more, who are investing in this as we move forward. So it’s, I feel beholden to all the people who are involved, and you know the people who fund this, although they aren’t in the trenches on the day-to-day basis, if we didn’t get their funding, we wouldn’t be in the trenches on a day-to-day basis.
 
So gratitude all around, in terms of that, and I think a lot of people forget that part.
 
You know that all of a sudden somebody, if a purse-string is tightening, they start resenting somebody instead of realizing “Well, they made an investment.” I mean, that’s a whole other story, but it’s not unrelated, both in the entertainment business and in just the kind of businesses that you deal with.
 
But, you know, it’s interesting because I was thinking, as you were saying, the director, and musical director, and all the creative talents I have—set design, lighting, design, sound, design, choreography, the projection and all that. Well, I had to audition them. And auditioning them was looking at their work. Meeting them, because you can love somebody’s work, but if they’re you don’t have a rapport, if you don’t have chemistry with them, that’s a danger, you know? That’s a danger.
 
And, you know, it’s hard enough, mounting a play or a business, that you want to make sure that you’re getting involved with the right people.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, the other thing is they can be great front stage, but they may be a problem backstage.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: And explain that distinction. You and I were talking about that a little before, and I love that distinction.
 
Dan Sullivan: In other words, that the audience may love them, but nobody who works with them does, in other words. And that’s corrosive. That’s very, very corrosive in any field.
 
I mean, I don’t care what the human, you know, organization is or what the thing is, that you want people who play well with each other. They have to compete on an individual basis, but once they’re accepted, then they have to be a really good team member.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: That’s right. But give us that distinction between the front stage and backstage person.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, first of all, I’m a front stage person, so my activity shows up in podcasts with you. It also shows up in giving live workshops, whether that’s in-person workshops or it’s on Zoom now because we’ve been forced, and, you know, really profited by the fact that we had to for a couple of years, you know, in order to earn our keep, we had to get the money through people who were all over the planet. But I was the front stage person. And then I write, and I have a lot of books. They do a lot of videos, I do a lot of audios.
 
And simply what I mean is that the appropriate role for me is presenting, you know, the product, and presenting the message that our company has.
 
Babs is good front stage but she’s actually the backstage person—this is my partner in life and my partner in business for 40 years, Bob Smith—and if you used a theater analogy, she’s responsible for the whole theater and the success of the theater. And I’m responsible for what the audience actually sees.
 
So when you look at any business, I think the theater analogy is a very good one: You’ve gotta make sure that your friend stage is good, and that’s what the customers see, and that’s what the customers enjoy, and that’s what the customers refer that other people should come and have this experience.
 
I always say that the script for front stage is quite a bit smaller than the script for backstage and that’s, you know, if you took all the binders that the choreographer and the music director and the sound director and everything, they’ve got binders, too. And I have to tell you, they’re binders are a lot thicker than the script that the actors work for and the musicians work for front stage. You know, and there’s a lot of electricity and plumbing behind the walls that you don’t want the audience to see, and you sure don’t want them-
 
One thing to do is always make sure that your paying customers, you don’t involve them in your backstage issues.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: That’s right. You’re absolutely right.
 
Dan Sullivan: It’s not like the airline industry. I’ve said that the airline industry is the most consistent marketing industry in the history of the world, because they have a formula that “We’re not happy until you’re not happy.”
 
Jeffrey Madoff: So they’ve been working on that over the years, yes.
 
Dan Sullivan: And you can be consistent. You can be consistent with that unless you get too good.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: But I wanted to point out also that your backstage/front stage comparison isn’t a result of our conversations. This is how you’ve viewed your business for years.
 
Dan Sullivan: Entrepreneurship is most akin to the entertainment industry. The entrepreneur has to be very, very clear about they as a personality and they as a person. Are they the front stage lead in the company? Because if that’s the case, then you have to have an equally powerful backstage person who actually manages the business of the business. You know.
 
I mean, I’m very, very good at selling and I’m very, very good at bringing in money, but you don’t want me to have anything to do with the money after the envelope is opened.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: I get it.
 
Yeah, you know, what we were going through, which is interesting, with the auditions is—and this is where collaboration comes in so strongly—Edgar Gardineaux, our choreographer, may say “This person is a fantastic dancer. They can do the partnering and the flips and acrobatics we want our dancer to do great.” And Shelton may say, “But they can’t sing. Yeah, we need somebody that can sing.”
 
Shelton and I always confer on the actors. And Sheldon may say “They don’t have the chops. Yeah, well, they can’t be…”
 
Sheldon and I always confer on the actors, and Sheldon may say, “They don’t have the chops.” We’re demanding, by the way, our play uniquely is demanding. Not that other plays haven’t, but we’ve got the same actor who plays... and I think this is fascinating, plays the businessman at the airport. You know these parts, opens the second act doing “Tutti Frutti”, the Little Richard song, then plays Olisamaeka, Lloyd’s driver in Nigeria, and then he’s part of the ensemble and dancing.
 
We’re asking this talent to do a lot of stuff. We have to collaborate among us that they’re going to check the boxes necessary. I mean, on the floor, we probably had 25, 30 pictures for probably about 10 different slots that we were considering people for, and moving them around. And then you start horse trading: “Well, do they sing well enough that they can sing in the ensemble? They’re not going to be doing any solo work, and is their dancing good enough?” And it’s all of that kind of thing.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. I mean, the one thing that I think you become more aware of, the more experience you have of how much success is trade-offs where you don’t get anything 100%, but you’re putting three 80% together, and then it takes on a special quality. The other thing is that the play actually transforms the people who are in the play.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: That’s right. Yeah, that’s right.
 
Dan Sullivan: They take on a added dimension, which is the teamwork dimension. They have to have those three things, but then this is when we’re into the realm of magic now.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: You’re right, you’re right. And it’s interesting because certainly the initial audition is akin to the job interview. How do you come across?
 
And I think contrary to what lots of people say, I think often the decisions are made within the first 30 seconds to a minute, whether you want to be around that person or not.
 
Dan Sullivan: I’ve found over 30 years, my getting used to someone and being comfortable with someone has moved from the first month down to the first 30 minutes, to the first 30 seconds. It’s a click or it’s not a click.
 
It was very interesting. We hired a person, and I wasn’t part of the hiring process, but in my offices in Chicago and Toronto, I have a café and I don’t have an office. I just have a table in the café.
 
First of all, if I had an office, it would be a messy office. But if the café is cleaned up at 5:00 every night and it’s a fresh table and I can move around tables…
 
But this woman walked through and I was struck by... My first thought is, “She’s too perfect. There’s something about her. She’s just too perfect.”
 
She wowed everybody. Babs said, “I saw that person come through and I just want to tell you, she’s too perfect. There’s something that I’m picking up, there’s something offbeat about this.” One of our team leaders started going through emails and started going through social media and everything, and there was one email that was actually a doorway into another entire email universe, and in her off hours, she was a burlesque dancer.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Now, is that a plus or a minus to you?
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, I mean, it would be a good question. If she comes out and says, “Look, I want to tell you something right now, that I have a hobby and it’s burlesque dancing, and you can go to the videos and everything else.” Some people do other things, but this was raunchy burlesque and everything like that.
 
And she came across as the Salvation Army would not have a hard time with her, she was that type of person. And sure enough, there was this whole other side of her and there was other things about her personal life and everything that came through. But it was just momentary. As she walked through, I said, “Wow, she’s almost too perfect.” And it was just something I was feeling.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Well, to your point, when we were auditioning people for Malvern, as our first commercial run, someone came in and sang and read a couple scenes, and I said to Sheldon, “She’s pretty good.”
 
And he goes, “Yeah, but it’s not going to work for us.”
 
I said, “Really? Not going to consider her?”
 
And he said, “She’s going to be back for the dance audition. You’ll see.”
 
I said, “Okay.”
 
So later that afternoon, dance audition, there’s probably in this group, say 16 dancers that are doing things in unison. She stops it three times to ask questions of Edgar, the choreographer, and then she says, “Can I talk to the director, please?”
 
Dan Sullivan: Ooh, wow.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: So-
 
Dan Sullivan: The director has already talked.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: And Sheldon goes down there and her back was to me, she’s talking to him and Sheldon’s and my eyes catch and he goes... And he came back and he said, “You see what I mean?” Because he’s auditioned people for hundreds and hundreds of shows, he gets the vibe of somebody who’s going to be a problem.
 
And he said, “Look, she’s the kind of person that requires constant attention and disrupts the whole community that we have, and we can’t have somebody like that.” Was she talented? Yeah, she was talented. But there are talented people who don’t do that. So, you keep looking instead of settling.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, and it’s a funny thing because my feeling is that intuition is highly developed wisdom that comes from years and years of trial-and-error experience. So intuition is not a haphazard thing.
 
My sense, I’ve never met an entrepreneur who’s been really successful on a continual basis—and what I mean by that, adapting to change very, very quickly in the marketplace, in the economy, and culturally, there’s changes—who doesn’t have a very, very nose for something’s changing, what was working last quarter may not work this quarter and we’ve got to get ready for it. And there’s no factual information that in any way would support that intuition right now. But there may be in a month. And the intuition is picking up on a future problem early, or a future opportunity early.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah, and I want to mention something that also feeds into this from the talent aspect or the job candidate aspect. So going back some years when I was interviewing some people for an editing position from my production company, somebody came through and we were talking a bit and I said, “Are you familiar with what we do?”
 
And he said, “No, not really.”
 
I said, “Well then, what are you doing here?”
 
And he was stunned. And I said, “Well, you’re applying for a job, so I assumed that you would like to get a job, yet you don’t know anything about the company. It’s easy enough to research who we are, and look at our work and you hadn’t done either.” And I thought, “Well, that’s not good. Why would you do that?”
 
Now, flip that now to theater: We have somebody who’s reading for a part, they know the song, or they know what’s required. They have the sides. Let’s say they see “Lawdy Miss Clawdy” in there, and so they don’t sing it at all right, and they didn’t bother to Google it, go to YouTube and hear it, so they could do the melody right. So Shelton, the musical director Shelton, and I look at each other, and say, and I said, “Isn’t that Auditioning 101: Be prepared?” So whether you’re auditioning for a company, whether you’re auditioning for a play, do your homework.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, yeah, you know directly the person I’m talking about here, and it’s Gord Vickman, who’s our podcast manager, who-
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Great guy.
 
Dan Sullivan: ... afterwards will package this and put it into the proper format. But we put in the specs for a podcast manager, and then we have a five-step hiring process where I’m the last person actually to meet the person. I talk to all of our team, what I’m looking for, Gord made it through all four previous filters. And the fourth one was, “Which of Dan’s podcasts do you like the best?”
 
And they said, “Dan’s podcasts? What’s that?”
 
And Gord had listened to about 20 of the podcasts, and when he came in, he said, “I really liked the one that you did on your father, and you were talking about what you learned from your father, your business instincts.” And he said, “But I have a couple of questions to ask you that came up when I was watching the podcast,” and he was totally into the activity that he was going to be responsible for.
 
But even my whole approach to it, he wanted to know how I had drawn the particular insights from my father, because my father was terrific as a worker, and he was good landscaper and he was a good farmer, but he could only be on his own. He never really knew how to hire. And I worked for him, and not the sort of person I’d want to have as a boss.
 
He said, “I was amazed when you said that, that most people wouldn’t bring that up about their father.”
 
And I said, “Well, I brought it up to him when he was alive,” so I said, “There’s no mysteries here, and I’m not the only one who had a father.” I mean, it’s a human experience and everything.
 
He said, “That’s it.” He says, “You just talked about things that humans experience.” And he says, “I think that’s a good approach to podcasting.”
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Well, and to the point, he was prepared, and he was prepared to ask you questions.
 
One of the actors who was auditioning for the part of the lawyer, we wanted to hear him do that. We heard him do a couple things. We wanted to hear him do that. So, we said, “Do you want to take a few minutes to do it?” Because he hadn’t seen the sides yet.
 
So he comes back in 15 minutes and he said, “So I just want to be clear about something. He is in Louisiana. Is he from Louisiana?”
 
And I said, “Yes.”
 
So he said, “So he’s got a Southern accent.”
 
So he wanted to up his odds by asking the right questions so he could interpret the part, and that was really interesting because to me, again, that’s 101 basics, “Ask key questions, show you’re interested.”
 
Dan Sullivan: I think the biggest thing there, he’s actually seeing the play not from his perspective, but from your perspective.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: That’s right. And that’s a key thing in collaboration.
 
Dan Sullivan: And you know right off the bat that if he starts off by seeing things from your perspective, he’s just answered about 15 questions that don’t have to be asked.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yes. That’s right. Because what that activity does is win the confidence. That’s right.
 
Dan Sullivan: Because you just want to write somebody’s name in, and that’s a solution. You don’t want that name to be a problem.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: That’s right.
 
So when I think about collaborations, what makes a good collaboration, you had sent me a great video, Oscar Peterson and Michel Legrand, two phenomenal, phenomenal musicians who played off of each other. There’s no words in this. It’s their music and the mutual respect, admiration, and joy that each had for the other while they were playing, and there was a conversation-
 
Dan Sullivan: Both piano players.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yes.
 
Dan Sullivan: And each were a very distinctive style. And then they merged their styles. I mean, crescendo when the bass player, the drummer, and everybody comes in, and then they’re almost doing a contrapuntal like Bach did with himself, but melodically, they were in tune right from the beginning.
 
I mean, the other thing is that that particular song, Michelle Legrand was the one who introduced it back in the 1960s. It was a song, I think it was a soundtrack-
 
Jeffrey Madoff: From Umbrellas of Cherbourg.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, but I think Michelle Legrand was the one who made it famous as a single. And it was in Paris where the concert was, concert was in Paris. He’s a star of stars in France, and Oscar Peterson is one of the great, great jazz pianists probably around the world, but certainly in North America. From Montreal originally, actually, Montreal-born.
 
Anyway, but it’s just such a pleasure that they both so know their art that they’re just listening to where the other person actually is.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yes.
 
Dan Sullivan: They’re not listening to where they are, they’re listening where the other person is, and they’re just doing a merge or a meld of styles, and each of their styles is very distinct even when they’re collaborating.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Well, and you just hit on what I think is one of the most important keys to a collaboration, and that is listening. That listening is so important, and it’s not just listening, it’s also engaging with it and paying attention.
 
Dan Sullivan: You’re creating something that neither of you could do individually. You’re creating-
 
Jeffrey Madoff: That’s right.
 
Dan Sullivan: ...a higher level of performance.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Well, in acting, something that’s very powerful is the ability to listen, and especially important in theater, because in a movie, you might just have a close-up of one of the two people while they’re talking in a quick reaction shot. In theater, you got to stay in character even if somebody does a monologue and you’re the other person on stage, you got to stay in character.
 
It’s not like you’re just waiting to talk. You need to be engaged so you can bring the right energy into the conversation when you do talk, and seem engaged. So that listening is critical and silence is very powerful, so what they were doing is they were having a conversation with music.
 
They were listening to each other, paying attention to each other. And when they switched who was playing, it was seamless because they were both so engaged in the other’s work. I think whether you’re in business or performing, that is key. And then you couple that with what I think is so important is the joy of the process. You want that other person to succeed, too.
 
Dan Sullivan: And have a good time.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Exactly. Exactly. And that’s so critical.
 
What are some other examples, other than what I’m doing and what you do in terms of collaborations that work so well? And I thought of Scorsese with De Niro in those first few movies, where there’s a brilliant collaboration and clearly friendship and respect that’s gone on now for what, 50 years, but amazing, or you look at Laurel and Hardy, or you look at The Beatles.
 
Dan Sullivan: Or you look at the great lyricist composers, Oscar and Hammerstein, and Rodgers and Hart, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Gilbert and Sullivan, the great movie Topsy-Turvy, they didn’t even like each other. I mean, they didn’t even like each other. They never actually worked together, but their style just perfectly merged. Sullivan wanted to be a classical composer, and he composed lots of classical stuff, but we only remember him for the work that he did with Gilbert.
 
And Gilbert just wanted to knock out plays and make a lot of money. I mean, that was probably first, where that duo of lyricist... in popular entertainment, the lyricist and the composer became famous, because they were like The Beatles. I mean Gilbert and Sullivan, the operettas that they created.
 
It’s a wonderful film, Topsy-Turvy, and it’s... What’s his name? He’s an English director, but he insists that the actors have to start a year before the filming starts, and they have to get into the roles.
 
It’s late Victorian England. He said, “You have to know how people talk. You can’t be a modern British person in this.” And he brought in butlers from Buckingham Palace to say how daily life... I mean, if you want to go to get a picture of what things were like 100 years ago, pull the talent in from Buckingham Palace because-
 
Jeffrey Madoff: It hasn’t changed.
 
Dan Sullivan: It hasn’t changed at all.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Is that director Mike Leigh?
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, Mike Leigh. Yeah.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah, yeah. He’s great.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, Mike Leigh. But you got to live the role before you even start.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: So back to the play, for a perfect example of that is that one of the dancers who was a young Lloyd, Edgar said to him, “No, you can’t do that move. You’re into the 1990s. This is the 1950s.”
 
He said, “Well, I thought it’d be kind of cool.”
 
And he said, “It’s not kind of cool. We’re faithful to the time of this play, and it’s the 1950s, and those weren’t moves that were done then.”
 
And it’s just like what you’re saying, is that you’ve got to be true to the part, so that it all seems authentic, and that authenticity comes from doing research or it comes from listening to the people that you’re working with, that kind of thing.
 
Dan Sullivan: I think the subtitles of our entire podcast here is “Listening.” I mean, the whole notion of a professional is that you’ve practiced so much that you can’t get it wrong, and that means that your attention can be completely open to listening to what other people are doing. You’re not preoccupied with what you’re doing. You’re just listening to what all the other members of the team are doing.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Well, and the important thing about that, which is true in business, and it’s true in theater and film, and that is you have to agree on what the objective is. And everybody’s got to be reading from the same script, so to speak, and if you’re not, there’s going to be a dissonance. So you want to eliminate that dissonance so that you’re all working together.
 
And it’s interesting because even recently, Sheldon and I were in a meeting and somebody was saying, “Well, you should have celebrity be your lead because that’ll help you get onto more talk shows, and you’ll get more publicity, because they get publicity, they’re stars, so they get publicity.”
 
And I said, “No.”
 
“Why do you say no?”
 
I said, “Because I want the play to be the star. I don’t want Lloyd Price as interpreted by X, or X’s Lloyd Price. I want it to be Personality: The Lloyd Price Musical.”
 
But it’s really interesting because when you all agree, and everybody’s target is that, it’s not about... Sheldon and I had coffee together yesterday morning before I took off, left for the airport, and we were saying about a particular scene, “What would you think if we did it this way? And we gave that decision to this character instead of that character? That could change the color of that scene, give that character more power, and deepen their relationship.”
 
And I said, “Oh, I like that. That’s cool. I’ll try that.”
 
And when you give currency to other people’s ideas, and you don’t try to be the hog or the person, the only ideas that are good are their ideas or what they believe to be their ideas...
 
My mom always used to say to me, “Don’t argue with them. Repeat what they said earlier and say what a good idea it was, or...” and I have done this and it has worked. I’ll say, “When you said X, I’ve really been thinking about that. That was really great.” Well, they didn’t say X. I repeated back what I had said earlier, but credited them with saying it, and they thought it was a great idea once it was theirs.
 
Dan Sullivan: Sam Goldman, he said “You know, in Hollywood, the most important skill is sincerity,” he says, “because once you can fake that, you’re clear to go.”
 
Jeffrey Madoff: That’s right. That’s right. Although my favorite Hollywood quote is actually William Goldman screenwriter who said, “Nobody knows anything,” Which is true. Everybody can explain why something was successful afterwards.
 
Dan Sullivan: It’s like big data.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: That’s right. That’s right. You can find all the supporting arguments for it.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, it predicted everything up until yesterday.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: That’s right. That’s right.
 
Dan Sullivan: Nothing new that got created today that hasn’t shown up as measurable data yet.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: So how do you see theater, entertainment, like what we’re talking about, and entrepreneurship in business, hand in glove in terms of the importance and the criteria for having a good collaboration?
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, I mean, my approach to entrepreneurship has always been the entertainment model. One of the key things that’s different, and it’s been a great differentiator for a Coach right from the beginning, that if you look how entertainers schedule their life, they have three essentially different kinds of days. They’ve got obviously performance days, when you’re delivering, but they also have days which are practice or rehearsal days, and then they have free time, either willingly or unwillingly. They have free time. So, there have to be rejuvenation periods because it’s very demanding work.
 
But most people, entrepreneurs attempt to run their life by a corporate bureaucratic day, which is everything mixed together every day, including the weekends. The email is never off, the cell phone is never off. I said, “I don’t think you get great performance.” I think you get at best acceptable, average performance from people, but there’s no distinctions. You’re just part of the same process for years on end. And there has to be these very sharp, energetically different ways that you lead your life.
 
I mean, a performance day isn’t what you did when the audience can see you, the performance day was how you got up that morning, how you prepared yourself to go there, and the whole day you have to consider as performance day because you can’t have out of character moments during that day. You have to be in character.
 
But that takes a lot of energy, and you have to have days when you’re off. And plus that, it took a lot of practice and rehearsal to get you to the point where you could be convincingly in character. That takes a lot of energy, and you’ve got to have 180-degree break from that at certain points, because you may be moving onto a totally different game, a totally different play.
 
So we institute that rate from the beginning, and it’s done wonders. And our entrepreneurs make twice as much money in half the amount of work time. But that was just for my entertainment days. I said, “This whole corporate and bureaucratic time system at best delivers high quality mediocrity.”
 
Jeffrey Madoff: I love high quality mediocrity.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, it’s better than low quality mediocrity.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: True. That’s true.
 
Dan Sullivan: I have about five before I have to be summoned.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Your parole officer is knocking at the door?
 
Dan Sullivan: Yes. Yes. My bracelet just went off.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Yeah. I think that on one side of the equation, those who are trying to get the work—this is just to wrap things up, I think it’s important to be prepared. Not only know what you’re applying for, but why are you applying? So the example you gave of Gord who came in prepared with questions, and who was fully knowledgeable about what you did, as opposed to the person I met with and said, “No, I don’t really know what you do, why don’t you tell me about it?”
 
“No. Goodbye.”
 
So, you can do a lot to get on the team by being prepared. And once you’re on the team, that collaboration, that willingness to listen, to contribute without ownership, because what you want is to reach the objective you’ve all agreed as to what it is, and it just makes for a much better time.
 
Dan Sullivan: The play is the star. That’s a great line.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: That’s right.
 
Dan Sullivan: And I think that you can build about 20 chapters under that particular one-liner.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Well, I think that once again, Dan, we have been true to the name “Anything and Everything”.
 
Dan Sullivan: Actually, I thought we were fairly focused, unusually focused today. I think we stayed within parameters today, and-
 
Jeffrey Madoff: We did.
 
Dan Sullivan: ... there’s not many parameters in life that I’ve ever respected.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Well, only because of the interest of time, and I know that you have other commitments, so it’s just sometimes by this part of the conversation, we start ricocheting all over the place. But we were relatively speaking pretty focused this time.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. But it’s a great topic. As we said right at the beginning at the first lunch, when we surprised you by offering to pay for some of the coffee on the overall production, I said I had a great interest in theater when I was just turning 20 and decided fairly quickly after that that it was an interest and I liked it and everything, but it wasn’t going to be my career.
 
But this gave me a chance to actually experience it at the major league level from the inside through my discussions with you. This has been a shared pleasure for us, both Babs and I, to be companions on the trip.
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Well, you guys are both great companions, and I’m very grateful for the support, both emotional and financial in moving us forward. What fun is an experience if you can’t share it? So that’s a wonderful thing, and thank you for that.
 
Dan Sullivan: You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to have Gord go through and pull out all the discussions specifically about the development of the Personality production, because we have two or three years of where you were at that point. I think it’d be interesting to-
 
Jeffrey Madoff: Cool. That would be interesting.
 
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For more about me and my work, visit acreativecareer.com and madoffproductions.com. To learn more about Dan and Strategic Coach, visit strategiccoach.com.