Creating Art, The Entrepreneurial Way

Jeff Madoff: This is Jeffrey Madoff, and welcome to our podcast called Anything and Everything with my partner Dan Sullivan.
 
Dan Sullivan: Hi everybody, it's Dan Sullivan here with the Onward Adventures of a Broadway play start-up, and we're, I think in stage eight or nine right now, but incredible number of strengths, incredible number of accomplishments, incredible amount of growth, of capability, and confidence on the part of the project, on the part of the entire company that supports this venture. And we're one big jump away from fame, success, riches. So Jeff, give them a little backfill on my very, very unspecific introduction there.
 
Jeff Madoff: Well, Dan was talking about how strategic the email I sent to our investors is, and I said, thanks, coach. Being a Strategic Coach, I of course look and respect your insights into these sort of things. And we were talking about just the kind of capabilities one can develop in these kinds of circumstances. And Dan and I share the fact that we don't golf, we don't play cards, we don't fish, so we can't retire. We
 
Dan Sullivan: Don't sit on beaches.
 
Jeff Madoff: That's right. So the default is figuring your way out of difficult situations when you have to.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. But in retrospect, the difficulties you face for the next jump are very, very small and simpler than the ones from the point where you wrote the first script.
 
Jeff Madoff: Oh, absolutely. It's interesting, the consistent thing through each iteration, from the very first reading we did to the workshop, to then Malvern, the consistent thing is that the audiences love the play and-
 
Dan Sullivan: The reviewers love the play.
 
Jeff Madoff: That's right. That's right. And one would think that would be the hardest part is to mount a play that both audiences and critics love, but we're in unique circumstances. Actually, I said earlier, before we started recording how everything is cyclical, although that's true, we've never in the history of live performance ever dealt with anything like COVID before where it changed the way people approach things.
 
Dan Sullivan: Especially live entertainment.
 
Jeff Madoff: That's right.
 
Dan Sullivan: In the center of a city.
 
Jeff Madoff: Yeah.
 
Dan Sullivan: At nighttime.
 
Jeff Madoff: Well, the nighttime part, like with Chicago, which gets a bum rap, is that it's dangerous. I can tell you that this is the most time I've ever spent in Chicago. I stayed there for seven weeks. I stayed downtown across from the Nederlander Theater. Sometimes I'd leave the theater at 12, 1 in the morning I walked. I never ever felt any kind of threat, anything. And Chicago's not even in the top 20 cities for crime, but the media unfortunately sort of beats that drum about, just like it's happened in New York too. And I'll get calls from people. Are you okay? Yeah. Well, I heard about something that happened on the subway. There's eight and a half million people here. Things are going to happen.
 
The problem is yes, people from the suburbs are reluctant to come in because they've built up this image that isn't accurate, but they've built up this image and that's caused a lot of businesses to suffer, not just theater and other live venues, but restaurants that feed off of those crowds and all of the knock on effect that it has. And it's not unique to Chicago. The public theater in New York is experiencing cutbacks. They're an incredible organization that's very, they're not in any danger, but they're being prudent because of the circumstances at this point.
 
Dan Sullivan: It's entrepreneurial.
 
Jeff Madoff: Exactly. That's exactly right.
 
Dan Sullivan: You don't get government subsidies. You don't get government bailouts.
 
Jeff Madoff: I mean, well in fact, some of us did get government help during COVID to try to preserve employees and so on, which I think did help a lot of people where the money ended up where it was supposed to go. Because unfortunately, whenever you're dealing with money, people figure out all the loopholes and tricks and everything else to try to game a system. But I think that, for instance-
 
Dan Sullivan: What you just said really shocked me.
 
Jeff Madoff: Yeah, I know. I know. With your vast experience.
 
Dan Sullivan: I figure if the criminal, or I don't know if it's criminal, but the scamming is less than 20% of the total. That's not bad.
 
Jeff Madoff: Right? Well, it's kind of like what Logan says in the play. He says, there's three ways to get money, be born into it, steal it, or earn it.
 
Dan Sullivan: You're actually living the play with this.
 
Jeff Madoff: That's no joke. That is no joke.
 
Dan Sullivan: You wrote the script. You're just following it.
 
Jeff Madoff: Yeah. That's funny because there are absolutely parallels. Absolutely. And it's interesting because during the course of our podcast and that we've revisited the play and talked about that and so on, it's very blunt in terms of what we're talking about because it isn't like I can't put on the face that many do that. Everything is always going phenomenal all the time. And it's hockey stick growth to the stratosphere as you well know, not just in your own life, but also with the people you work with as Strategic Coach. Being an entrepreneur, perseverance is probably the biggest part of it.
 
Dan Sullivan: I have a thing called The Four C’s, and if you're lacking capability and confidence because you haven't done it before and it's all learning and it's all progress that lies in the future, you have to start off with commitment. And then there's a period of courage, and this happens at each stage of the growth of this particular production that you accomplish one stage and you're there, and now you're presented with the next challenge. And you have to go back to commitment and courage before you get the capability and the confidence. I tell people, they say, well, what's the difference between confidence and courage? I said, confidence feels good.
 
Jeff Madoff: That's right. That's right.
 
Dan Sullivan: Courage does not feel good. I have to tell you, that's why most people like reading about it or watching it. They don't actually like to experience courage.
 
Jeff Madoff: Well, the things that required the most courage are the things that you just have no control over the ultimate outcome. So I mean, you prepare and you hope.
 
Dan Sullivan: It's all guesses and bets.
 
Jeff Madoff: That's right. That's right. And the thing with confidence, as you've said so well, that comes from capability, that you've done it enough.
 
Dan Sullivan: It's the reward for a capability.
 
Jeff Madoff: Yes. Yes. Well put. And so it's interesting because also, it's so weird because as I've gotten older, I'm actually more suited to risk because I've been through more. And so I don't get knocked out with some of the things that hit you. You learn either how to dodge the punches or deflect the punches, or sometimes you have to absorb them, but you know that this is a moment, and if you don't get back up again, I think giving up on something that's important to you, that's what failure is to me. And our portfolio value, if you will, of this play has been greatly enhanced by being in Chicago. It's been an incredible experience. It still is an incredible experience. I just got back last night from Chicago. You have to make tough decisions along the way. That's life, that's business. And it's not that I don't sit back and think, oh man, there is a frustration that comes in, but I can't say I've ever felt sad. I have felt frustrated, which then for me, frustration is the antecedent to figuring out the solution.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, I will tell you that. But Mike Koenigs and I did a podcast, I think it was on Friday, and I'll send you the podcast. And Mike had a lot of really interesting insights about it. One was he said, “I've never witnessed a company,” he's talking about the cast, “where everybody was hungry.” He said, “I've never seen a more…” that they were hungry. I think they were hungry for the opportunity. They were hungry for the story. They were hungry for the teamwork that they put together. And I got a sense, and Mike said, “There's not a weak spot from the start to the finish in that production, the scripting of it, the choreography of it, the music of it, but especially the cast.” And he said everybody was just totally there 100%.
 
Jeff Madoff: Well, that's something that I'm really proud of because yes, the commitment of the cast has been consistent. It was really interesting, from our first read through with this cast in Chicago, and I felt that we really put together a fantastic cast. They have to really run the gauntlet because for the acting, they've got to get by Sheldon. And me and he and I'll talk about it, and I could not ask for a more terrific collaborator. He's incredible. I sent you his letter, that he emailed, asked his permission if I could send it. I don't know if you saw it was a separate email.
 
Dan Sullivan: This week I had a full week, and I'm just going back through all the emails. I don't get that many emails. I'm hard to get in contact with purposely, purposely. Yours I go back over everything. So that'll be this week.
 
Jeff Madoff: Yeah. His email was so beautifully written to the cast. I went Wednesday after the matinee, and the matinee was once again terrific. The people's response to the show, I couldn't ask for better unless they actually just handed me cash on the way out. That would be nice. But short of that, I couldn't ask for... How much do you need? Let me write you a check here. I've got a bag of cash for you. But it's really interesting because on Friday night, well, first of all, I'll go back to Wednesday when I spoke to the cast after the matinee and told them that we'll be concluding our engagement in Chicago on July 30th. And that I want you guys to know how terrific you have been, how committed you have been, how fantastic you've been on stage performance after performance. And it was just so gratifying. And it flipped my mind back to our first read through with the Chicago cast, and Sheldon asked if anybody had any questions.
 
One of the, actually our dance captain, not our choreographer, but the dance captain, and just as a footnote, the dance captain works the dancers out in a half hour before the show starts. So they're stretched and they're limber and they're ready. And it's also about keeping all the performances sharp. And Christopher's just fantastic. I didn't know him at this point when he had, other than auditioning him and choosing him. And he said, “I don't have a question, but I have a comment.” And Sheldon said, Okay.” And he said, “In a time when books are being pulled off of library shelves and taken out of schools and our stories are being censored, the fact that there was an authentic story that's being told-”
 
Dan Sullivan: “In the language-
 
Jeff Madoff: That's right.
 
Dan Sullivan: “-of the times and the circumstance.”
 
Jeff Madoff: That's right. That's right. Thanks. That's correct. And he said that, “I just want to say thank you to you. And I want to say that it is a privilege to be involved in an authentic story and the authentic telling of that story.” And I'm like, oh man, that's really gratifying.
 
Dan Sullivan: See, all the thing that's made you annoying for more than 70 years.
 
Jeff Madoff: Finally is paying off.
 
Dan Sullivan: There's just no diplomacy whatsoever with Jeff.
 
Jeff Madoff: And then a few other people spoke up and kind of echoed that, and there hasn't been a dip in enthusiasm, a dip in performance, performance after performance. It's been incredible. And so when I spoke to them and their first response was, how can we help? Are you reaching out to this group? Are you reaching out to this group? And all of that. And then when we ended, half the cast came up and was just hugging me. And it was very emotional. And it's unusual. Of course, other shows achieve this, but not many, not many. It's few and far between where it's just not another gig. That's a very special feeling. Friday night, Saint Alban, who plays Lloyd, who I think is just a staggering showman, I mean, he's incredible. He's just incredible. And he hits notes I think that no human has ever hit before.
 
It's nuts. And he's so good. And he said to the audience, “If I could just have another moment of your time, you've got about two weeks to see the show. We're going to be closing on July 30th, and if you like the show…” and nobody from the audience left. And he said, “If you like the show…” And everybody started cheering again. And then he said, “Tell your friends. Bring your friends. Come see this important show.” And they applauded the curtain speech. And that was really touching. So I think there's so many factors that play into it. You and I have talked about collaboration. We've talked about the things that, the way to get the best from people is you can't beat the best out of them. You work with people. It doesn't mean you agree, but what it does mean is that you have respect and you listen.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well. I think that the audience picks up on all sorts of messages besides the ones that are scripted and spoken. I mean, they feel the energy of people. I think the number one thing that humans buy from other humans is energy.
 
Jeff Madoff: Absolutely.
 
Dan Sullivan: If they don't pick up that energy, it doesn't matter how artful or skillful their performance is, if they're not picking up that commitment level, first of all, live theater requires an enormous amount of courage.
 
Jeff Madoff: That's right.
 
Dan Sullivan: Because you're always one mistake away from a dead note, a dead note in the music, the music of theater. It's not just the music music but the music. There's something special about that. I've seen it six times now, so I picked it up from the beginning, but your earlier cast, the New York cast and the Philadelphia or the New York cast that came to Philadelphia, there are no bad notes in that either.
 
Jeff Madoff: That's right. No, it's every time. And Sheldon and I talk about this, every time we have put together a group that is committed. And it's interesting when I was saying that the actors have to run the gauntlet, so dramatically, Sheldon and I will coincide most of the time. And when we don't, we'll talk about it. If it's someone he thinks we should hear them again, that's good. If I say, I'd like to see them again, he's cool. And so you have to get through that. Then you've got to sing for Shelton, our musical director. And Shelton is just brilliant and so good. He sits there and I have a running joke with him about his check mark. If I see he puts a check mark by their name or check mark plus, they made it. There's no check mark, there's no further auditioning that person.
 
And then Edgar Gordino, our terrific choreographer, same thing. And then what happens is the horse-trading when we know we need somebody else for the dance ensemble, but they can't fulfill this part, but can we switch this person to air and all that kind of thing. But you've got to get through the four of us before you can get the opportunity. And it was also interesting because in mounting the play now four different times, and some of the people who have been with us from the beginning, like Stanley Mathis, who plays Logan, who was just so good. The problem is I can't even imagine anybody else playing the part.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, he's the anchor of the whole play.
 
Jeff Madoff: Yeah. I mean, isn't he terrific? And you've met him a few times now.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, I met him to talk to, I met him after the premier week in Chicago. That was the first time that I actually interacted with him.
 
Jeff Madoff: And he's nothing like the Logan character.
 
Dan Sullivan: No, he's a softie.
 
Jeff Madoff: Yeah, he is a great guy, really talented, and he's committed to this part. This is the part he wants to play. His agent didn't want him to do this because Stanley gets booked in New York all the time. He's terrific. And you've seen him from the very beginning in there. And it's interesting because when you have a few people like him, like Saint who is kind of the captain of the team, if you will.
 
Dan Sullivan: I mean you have the dance captain, but you also, he was like the acting captain.
 
Jeff Madoff: Yes, that's right. And his main thing, we bumped into each other on the street about a half hour after our talk and everything. I said, “How are you feeling?” He said, “I'm okay.” He said, “I want to make sure that everybody on the cast is cool and that they're good. I want to make sure they're all right.”
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. He does the same thing with the audience in the first couple of rows. He comes off-stage and he high-fives just to make sure that the folks in the front rows are okay.
 
Jeff Madoff: What's so cool is when he does that, or he'll talk back to people from the stage. And I love when we have those kind of audiences and he breaks that fourth wall and he plays off it so well, and I think the added benefit to that is everybody thinks that they are seeing, which they are, a unique performance.
 
Dan Sullivan: Oh, yeah. That's the impromptu.
 
Jeff Madoff: That's right. That's right. Actually, Stanley did something the other night, Friday night when I was talking to him after the show. I said, “That little bit you did at the end of the Larry Spangler scene.” And he started to laugh, and I said, “That was fun.” And the audience loved it. And he said, “Yeah, yeah, I wanna show them that Logan's got a sense of humor too.”
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, it's really funny, that particular scene with Larry Spangler coming in, and I said it was almost like Woody Allen's view of Beverly Hills. There's very definitely a different mindset in New York City about what takes place in Hollywood.
 
Jeff Madoff: Yes. Yeah. Carl, who plays that part, and he also plays Levy, the lawyer.
 
Dan Sullivan: The lawyer, he plays the lawyer.
 
Jeff Madoff: He's great. He's just great. And he has got this just innate comedic sense that his line deliveries are fantastic. He's just really, really good. It's a real pleasure. If you don't construct a wall between yourselves and the others in your business, let's say, you can discover that these are people too, and they're wonderful. And yeah, it's a very, very interesting dynamic. And when you go out there, I don't think people, you realize this because it’s also your desire to do theater and you get this, I don't think most people understand what it takes to put yourself out there eight times a week. Because each of those times that you go out there, we get into your courage and confidence world, and eight times a week you're putting yourself out there and essentially being judged by an audience. And I don't think that people really understand that.
 
Dan Sullivan: And it's not the same audience, different audiences.
 
Jeff Madoff: That's right. That's right. And what works with one might not work with the other.
 
Dan Sullivan: The one I went to the second time was with it now, I think a lot of them had come because of what other people said. So I was noticing the audience was very, very different. First performance to the second one I saw, which was about a month later. But they were there the moment that the play started, the audience was completely there.
 
Jeff Madoff: And isn't it interesting. And actually when we were watching, this was Malvern, it was one of our final previews, and Sheldon leaned over to me and said, “Do you hear that?” I said, “What?” And he said, “The silence.” I said, “Yeah.” And he said, “That's the sound of people listening. And you hear that every night.”
 
Dan Sullivan: The interesting thing about it is, unlike a lot of plays who take for granted that the audience are not thinkers, they don't require any thinking on the part of the audience. And I'll give you an example of Motown. About 10 minutes into the second act, I said, should have stayed in Detroit. The play turned south for me, the whole second half because it required thinking, it was just pure entertainment. I mean, it was like a variety show, the first half of it, but you didn't get any of the context. I mean, there was a genius there because he came off the assembly lines in an automobile assembly line, and then he applied the principles of assembly line to entertainment.
 
Jeff Madoff: Well, you're right. I mean, interestingly, Barry Gordy you're talking about, and Barry had asked Lloyd to start Motown with him, but Lloyd had a very lucrative contract with ABC Paramount and didn't particularly care for Barry. So he just didn't want to do it. And Barry's wife, according to Lloyd, was really a smart business person, but Barry had the vision not only for smooth the edges of rhythm and blues, that stuff that was coming out in the fifties, smooth it out. And by the way, I love the music, but it definitely became polished for a white audience.
 
Dan Sullivan: But yours really is thoughtful. It's an extremely thoughtful play. We didn't get together after the second one because we all had early flights out and other things, but you weren't there. If you had been there, we would've been there till midnight, one o'clock.
 
Jeff Madoff: Wasn't that a fun night?
 
Dan Sullivan: Oh, that was a fun night. Yeah.
 
Jeff Madoff: When we did that, I was-
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, we had before and after we had a three-part evening.
 
Jeff Madoff: Yes.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, it was four part because you allowed us to interact with the actors afterwards, and that was great.
 
Jeff Madoff: That was just a ball. I remember you-
 
Dan Sullivan: Especially Alexandria.
 
Jeff Madoff: Yes.
 
Dan Sullivan: And I said, I hope you take this as a compliment, but I kind of didn't like you at the beginning, but I really started to dislike you more and more as she went. And she said, “Oh, that feels so good.”
 
Jeff Madoff: She's going to be a star.
 
Dan Sullivan: She is a star. She is a star.
 
Jeff Madoff: She's so talented. Now there's another example, and I know you didn't pick up on it. That was also Irma Franklin, because we had a different costume, different wig and all that.
 
Dan Sullivan: Oh, no, no. I was shocked when I found out that it was the same actress.
 
Jeff Madoff: And she's part of the dance ensemble. She's terrific. She sings the best version of Piece of My Heart I've ever heard. There's an interesting story with Piece of My Heart, by the way, I was watching him work with Alexandria for the first time on that song, and she can belt, but when you belt, as Shelton said to her, “You're starting at such a high place, you've got nowhere to go, so don't think about that you're singing a song. Think about you are rhythmically telling me a story, so tell me a story. Don't sing me a song.” And as she started doing it, and he goes, “Take it down so you have a place to go, and stories have arcs just like songs have arcs. So I want you to remember that you're telling us a story and there needs to be an arc to that story.” So she started getting it, and then I said, “Alexandria, I want to give you some background.”
 
Burt Burns, who wrote the song, he had congenital heart disease and he had a series of operations. He died at age 39, and the take a piece of my heart was actually literal from the surgeries that he had. So he was betrayed by his own body. So it was both the physical pain but also the emotional pain and distress that his body was betraying him. So she clicked on that, and then she started really digging in, and the last time I saw her perform it was just this past Friday night where the nuances that came in just keep getting better and better, and it's so interesting.
 
Dan Sullivan: And she's 19 years old.
 
Jeff Madoff: Yeah. Well, that'll change.
 
Dan Sullivan: Really? Really? I think it's good the way it is, in a way. Why screw up a good thing by aging?
 
Jeff Madoff: Yeah, I think about that every morning when I look in the mirror as I'm shaving. Yes. And it's great, those stories where a master like Shelton helps someone who is learning and presents it in a way that they can relate to it, and that I could tell her a story that informed the emotional depth that she could take it.
 
Dan Sullivan: There was the continuation of the story is that they wouldn't let anyone have this song.
 
Jeff Madoff: Well, that's right. Yeah. Burt and his son, Brett and his sister run the estate, and they would not license the song ever. I was told, forget it. Our music clearance person couldn't get it cleared. Then I talked to someone who wrote the book that the documentary about Bang Records, which was Burke Burns' company. He wrote the book that the documentary was on, and he happens to be a good friend of a dear friend of mine, Doug Fielding, Joel Sullen is his name. He is a music writer in San Francisco, very respected, good guy. And he said, “They're not going to license the song to you.” I said, “Well, sure way to make sure nothing happens is do nothing. So my position's not going to deteriorate from here. I've got to know. So what do I got to lose? Would you make the introduction?” And he was nice enough to do that.
 
Bert's a really nice guy. We talked for hour and a half, two hours, and he said, “Well, the problem I have is we had done an off-Broadway play. We're hoping to bring it back. We want to go to Broadway.” And he said, “And I don't want the audience to be confused what happens if we're both on Broadway at the same time.” And I said, “I'll buy the champagne. That's not a problem. That's something to celebrate.
 
He laughed and said, “You're right.” He said, “You can do that. You can have the song.” And that was fabulous that he did that. And he was kind and generous enough. I said, “You're in the same situation.” His dad not only wrote Piece of my Heart with his writing partner, he also did Hang on Sleepy, Twist and Shout, wrote a lot of very successful pop songs. Nobody knows his name. And I said, “I'm going through the same thing with Lloyd and how we approached the marketplace with this, because most people don't know who Lloyd is at this point, but they do know the music.” So we're on the same path. And I think that empathy, if you will, and understanding that kind of bonded us.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, the other thing is that the number one bet that people make in their lives is on other people. This is the number one bet you make. Sizing up another person gets, hopefully, if you learn from your experiences, you get better and better at sizing people up with not much time. I've read a lot about this that mostly people, whether it's conscious or not, within the first 10 seconds, it's like or dislike, we like, don't like. Usually your first read has a very good reason.
 
Jeff Madoff: Yeah. Well, what do you think that reason is?
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, it's all your experience turned into wisdom, and it's not about particular messages and it's not about particular situations. Think about it. I mean, it's the number one skill that newborn babies have to get a handle on really quick. Reading people is the number one knowledge that gets us through our life. Think about the entire process of the play from the very, very beginning. You were constantly sizing up who's the go forward team.
 
Jeff Madoff: Right. That's right.
 
Dan Sullivan: And it's not just the individuals themselves. I mean, think about the Young Lloyd transformation from first one to second one to third one. I think you had three, didn't you?
 
Jeff Madoff: Two prior, he's the third.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Each of them was talented.
 
Jeff Madoff: Yes.
 
Dan Sullivan: Just based on talent. Each of them qualified. And I got a chance, you gave me a chance to talk to the person who was-
 
Jeff Madoff: Yeah, Darien Pierce, who's great.
 
Dan Sullivan: Darion Pierce, but he understood that he's the on-ramp to the highway. In other words that you're the one who sets the stage so that there's a believability who the adult Lloyd is in the first act, you're on the stage together, so there has to be this believability because physically they don't look like each other and everything. They're very, very different. But you got to get the audience make the transition without any problem. That's kind of your mindset about who you are and who other people are in the play.
 
Jeff Madoff: No, you're right. And it's also physicalizing the actions. He, working with Edgar and Saint did kind of earlier stage dance moves so that you could see an evolution. So it bridged the gap, as you said, being the on-ramp to adult Lloyd and his full-blown showmanship. That's right. And part of that was done by physicalizing parts of it, but not bringing it to full bloom till Saint did it. That's interesting. And Darien is another one that's just, I think is so talented.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. I think in one of our earlier podcasts, I think we might not have been in the podcast, but it was, what did you think? And I said, “Talent gets you in the door, but the question whether you stay inside the game really depends on your interaction with the other actors.”
 
Jeff Madoff: Well, it goes back to how you started this podcast. You're talking about energy, and maybe another way to put that is the vibe. Are you in harmony with the others or are you somehow dissonant?
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Yeah. And I remember there was a discussion about the leads in the play and people say, get somebody really famous who's a celebrity, and they'll come out for celebrity purposes. But the problem is that their business in life is being a celebrity, not being a member of a team.
 
Jeff Madoff: Right. There are of course exceptions to that, but few. The thing is it's very different in theater than in movies because in movies, you may not even shoot with half the cast. In plays, you're with everybody, every performance.
 
Dan Sullivan: All the time. Yeah.
 
Jeff Madoff: That's right.
 
Dan Sullivan: It's very fun. I don't know if I relayed this, but when I was at the stage I went to, for two years, I was in the drama school at Catholic University, which was one of three universities in the early sixties where they were known for their drama schools. So that's where I went. I left Ohio and I went to Washington, DC, and the three universities were Northwestern and Chicago Yale and Catholic University. There was a lot of, before there were professional acting schools and theater schools, and it was at the same time that Richard Burton got the role of Hamlet on Broadway. I think he had the first million-dollar contract in the history of theater.
 
Jeff Madoff: I think you're right.
 
Dan Sullivan: For that. And he was shunned for the rest of his life in London of selling out to the Americans. So I wrote him a letter to the cast, and about three weeks later, I get a handwritten three-page letter answering all my points with great insight. But then I came to the final paragraph and he said, the biggest decision you're going to have to make is whether you want to be an actor or you want to be a star.
 
And he said, if you want to be an actor, he said, go to a really, really good theater school and learn the craft, and then you'll get leads, and then you'll be brought into a company and you'll work your way up. And he said, that's the route to do that. And he said, but if you want to be a star, you go down to the local church that puts on plays and you be the star there. And when you outgrow that, then you pick another place and you're always the star. He says, but you're never second. You're always first. You always, always have to be first. And then his last line was, by the way, I never wanted to be an actor.
 
Jeff Madoff: Wow. I got to ask, do you still have that letter?
 
Dan Sullivan: No, no, no. I should have saved it, but I didn't.
 
Jeff Madoff: Yeah, that would be one to save. If you're going to save letters, you probably don't get many like that.
 
Dan Sullivan: And it kind of told me. And then I was drafted into the Army, and I ended up as the entertainment coordinator for about half of South Korea, and I got there because the rule in the army was you don't volunteer for everything. So I said, if nobody volunteers for anything and you're the person who volunteers for everything, I wonder what happens to you, and doors open, and you're an odd creature, an exotic creature as a drafted private first class. But it was just a set of circumstances, and I got to do that. So I was able to put on three major plays in 18 months, and then I handled the USO shows who came through. It was very interesting. This relates, I'm not going on too far of a detour here, but one of the USO shows came over and the key featured person was Doreen, who was one of the first Mouseketeers. She was in the original.
 
Jeff Madoff: I remember that name. Yes.
 
Dan Sullivan: Doreen Tracy. And she had been on stage since she was three years old. Her parents were Vaudeville, she's British, but they moved to the States and then 10, 11 years old when they had the auditions. She already had seven years of being on stage, and she was a good dancer, and she was a good singer, pretty well my age. I think she might've been a year older, but she was over. Now this is 10 years after Mickey Mouse Club. This is 1966. So we went around, we had bus tours. There were about five bases that we took her particular show. She had some other musicians with her. We ended up her sitting with me, and I would just chat about her and she says, ‘This is probably my last entertainment experience of my life.” She said, “I just volunteered because I believe that the troops should have entertainment.”
 
But she said, “I am not any better at 23 than I was at 13.” She says, “I hit the peak of my skill when I was 13.” And she said, “So this is it. This is the last trip and this is my last performing.” And she was there and it was pleasant. She was a nice person, total extrovert. I mean, she was just totally extroverted person. Then for a long time, I didn't think about it, but when the internet came in, I looked her up one day, and true to her word, she had gone back and she had apprenticed as a talent manager at Warner Brothers. Went right back to Hollywood, and she had spent her whole career up until mid-sixties as a talent manager, and she was the manager for Frank Zappa and a whole number of other people, and she was very, very well thought of in Hollywood.
 
And she's the one who kept the whole team together from the Mouseketeers. She's the one who they would have annual reunions and everything else. Then she bowed out at her sixties and she created a jazz bar in Hollywood. And then I just saw that she had died probably about three years ago. She died of cancer in her early seventies. But it was very interesting where someone who was that famous when they were young and the Musketeers were all really famous. She had a remarkable sense of who she was at 23, which I find kind of unusual.
 
Jeff Madoff: And especially when your whole youth is being an entertainer, although I don't know what sense one has of being an entertainer, you don't really know who you are when you're that young. That's interesting.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, she had a real sense of who she was and who she wasn't. She said, “I'm not any better. I haven't really improved.” She said, “I got to get to something where I can-”
 
Jeff Madoff: That's really interesting that you would even say that. Yeah. That's incredible.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah.
 
Jeff Madoff: Just furthering the detour a bit. Last night, Margaret and I watched an old Law and Order.
 
Dan Sullivan: The original Law and Order.
 
Jeff Madoff: Yeah. I love Jerry Orbach. I mean, he was great. He wasn't the very first, but he's the one for me. And it was really interesting because one of the actors who was being tried for murder, I said to Margaret, “That's Chadwick Boseman.” She said, “I don't recognize him.” I said, “Yeah, that's him. Absolutely. That's him.” And I went, as I always do, go to IMDB and look at the cast. It was called, can I Get a Witness From 2004? And it was Chadwick Boseman. And I love seeing people in their early stages before they manifest into the great actors that they might become like he did become. And that was just really cool. And I wanted to tell you also, coda to the Richard Burton story, I used to direct lots of voiceovers. So I was choosing a voiceover talent and really liked this woman's voice. And we worked together half a dozen times. She was great to work with. Really nice. And one of the, I don't know, fourth time we worked together or something, her name was Kate Burton.
 
Dan Sullivan: Oh, yeah, that's her daughter.
 
Jeff Madoff: Yeah. Well, I didn't know that when I heard Kate Burton. She doesn't have a British accent. She was born in United States, and it didn't even occur to me because of her last name that they would be related, because I'd have thought if she had a kid, they'd grown up in England or whatever. I didn't even think about it. So she said, “When I was talking to my dad,” and then she continued, she said, “and Richard said,” and I said, “Wait a minute, Richard is your dad?” And she just said, “Yes.” And I said, “Richard Burton's your dad?” And she said, “Yeah, I didn't mention that before?” And I said, “No.” She said, “I mean, I guess not surprising, but yeah. Yeah, that's my father.” And she had a great voice, and she's a fantastic theater actress and a very, very nice person. And I'm now talking-
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, I think I've seen her on stage, or it might've been because she did movies too, so I might've seen her in a movie, but it's really interesting. Burton wasn't his name. His name was Jenkins, Richard Jenkins. He didn't speak English until he was like 16 years old. He was Welsh.
 
Jeff Madoff: From Wales, right? Yeah.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. He was Welsh. There was a great speech coach for theater in Cardiff in Wales by the name of Philip Burton. And over about a two-year period, he just almost gave himself over because he felt that Richard Burton just had unbelievable charisma. But really, if you're going to be in English-speaking theater, you should actually take a few years and learn English. I mean, it helps.
 
Jeff Madoff: It does. Yes.
 
Dan Sullivan: You want everything going for you. But he made him go, it was like Demosthenes, you know the story of Demosthenes, went down to the seashore and put stones in his mouth, he was a great orator, Demosthenes was Greek orator, and they made him put stones in his mouth and shout over the sound of the waves and the wind, and he developed that just incredible voice. He had a difficult relationship with alcohol.
 
Jeff Madoff: Yeah, true.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, as many, they said that if you offer a Welshman seven doors to go through and one of them says disaster, this is the one he picks.
 
Jeff Madoff: Yeah, I saw him on Broadway in Equis.
 
Dan Sullivan: Oh, yeah. I saw him in the film. I didn't see the Broadway. I saw him.
 
Jeff Madoff: Well, he actually took over the part, I don't remember from who on Broadway to prepare for the film. And that was pretty interesting to see him. I didn't meet him, but just to-
 
Dan Sullivan: He is a dark and moody character. You know what I mean?
 
Jeff Madoff: Alcohol will do that to you.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah.
 
Jeff Madoff: So I'm curious, because you have seen each iteration of the play. I'm curious your perception from one to the next to use your on-ramp or bridge metaphor, how did you see this as opposed to the previous? Did you see differences? Was it essentially the same thing, but better produced or whatever? I'm just-
 
Dan Sullivan: I think the, first of all, Mike Koenigs and I were talking about this. I spent about four days with Mike, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, actually five days with Mike. He was in for the theater weekend, and I saw him every day, and we talked every time. And he said it was the power of the script. He said it was the power of the script. And he said, “This is just one of the greatest scripts I've ever seen.” So the question was having the talent of the company, and that's the backstage talent too, having the backstage talent fill out the power of the script.
 
It's just a great story. Your commitment to making sure that Lloyd's story became well known is probably the nuclear reactor at the center of the script. So my sense is I don't see any inconsistencies in the stages, but the talent and the capability and the confidence of the entire company just jumped every time. So I don't get a sense that there were any reversals. We talked about Logan's role early right after the workshops, and I said, “I think there's a bigger role here. I think there's a bigger role for him. It seems to me it's the dynamic between Logan and Lloyd that makes the story because each saved the other.”
 
Jeff Madoff: That's right. That's right.
 
Dan Sullivan: And each transformed the other.
 
Jeff Madoff: Now, that also is true.
 
Dan Sullivan: And Logan needed, he never had any legitimacy.
 
Jeff Madoff: That's right.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. I mean, he was good in his illegitimate universe.
 
Jeff Madoff: Right.
 
Dan Sullivan: But he didn't have any connection with legit, and wouldn't have if he hadn't met Lloyd.
 
Jeff Madoff: Right. As he says in the play.
 
Dan Sullivan: He would've been shot somewhere.
 
Jeff Madoff: Yeah, no, that is true. And it says to Lloyd, going, legit doesn't seem legit to me. I want to say that. And thanks for that compliment about the script. Working with, in particular, Sheldon made the script better, and that collaboration made the storytelling more powerful
 
Because, and I think this is also a lesson for business. When you share the same goal, then it's not about pride of authorship and your ego and all that. It's about, and this is how Shelton is, this is how Edgar is, it's how do we make this the best piece of entertainment? So the script is up until you lock it during the second to last preview, things change. After you lock it, a day or two before so the actors get used to it before the opening, then there's no more changes. But the changes that we made are changes that were collaborative, not me running off by myself, because we were all invested in reaching that goal of putting the best piece of entertainment on that stage. And I can tell you that anybody who tries to put across that they made the movie, it was essentially them, or they did the play and it was essentially them, or they built a big business, and it's essentially them. They may be the driving force. I mean, they had to raise the money and do all that sort of thing. But once you're in it, if you don't work with and leverage the talents around you, not only are you missing a big opportunity, it's just not smart. And the joy of the process of working on those ideas together, and then ultimately I've got to go write what those changes are and do that. And sometimes it's some experimentation. And one of the things actually relates to what you had just said about the part of Logan, which was when we were in Chicago in December for castings, Adam Hess, the executive producer, and Sheldon and I had dinner together, and I can't remember if it was Adam or Sheldon, but brought up the idea. I think it was Sheldon brought up the idea of why don't you make the decision when Lloyd is sort of, they want to hear Smokey Robinson.
 
They don't want to hear Lloyd. And Lloyd goes through that whole soul-searching about, is it only about the money and all that? Instead of him saying, I've got an idea, and it being the club and so on, he said, “Change the power dynamic. Give that idea to Logan.” He said, “I don't know how you're going to do it, but I think you can, and why don't you try that?” And I said, “No, that's a really interesting idea. I like that.” And he said, “Yeah, then that gives Logan the power in that. It's not Lloyd always coming up with the winning answers. And that shifts the power dynamic in a way that could be really interesting.” I said, “I like that idea a lot. That's really cool.” And so I had to sort of get back into the heads of Lloyd and Logan, how would that realistically come about? And to your point, it made the Logan character more important, and that was really cool. And that kind of creative challenge is, it's fun. It's not that it's easy, but it's fun. I liked it. And especially because it worked.
 
Dan Sullivan: I talk about this a lot inside the company, and I've come to understand what celebrity is. Celebrity is where people have heard about you from a distance. And in my world, they've read books, but I'm at a distance and they've seen videos and I'm at a distance, and they've heard audios at a distance, and they may have spent a lot of time doing this. They make you bigger and bigger in their imagination, when they finally meet you. But it happens with your team members in the company too. Because I have team members now who have crossed 32 years in the company, and we have about 25 who are over 20 years, and they have a completely different history of the company, the early days to use the analogy, the first script, and then the first reading, and the first small audiences and everything like that.
 
But there's people who joined us during COVID who are in their twenties, and the people that they're working with are in their forties and fifties now, but they have vast experience inside the company. And my name is mentioned, but they don't meet me because we weren't in the office. A lot of them were hired in the Zoom stage of doing the audience. And then they meet you and they're kind of awestruck. One of them said, “That's my boss there.” And I said, “Can I talk about it?” I said, “I know it's normal to think about that if you join a company and everything about the boss.” But I said, “It's all about Unique Ability.” Each of us has a Unique Ability, and I have a particular Unique Ability. There isn't anyone else in the company who has this Unique Ability, but that's true about 15 different other individuals. It's all that we have different capabilities, but it's all about the teamwork. So I'll let you get away with the boss thing this time, but I said, “I don't want to hear that anymore because it's the wrong thought. It doesn't do anything to me, but it does something to you and the development of your own abilities.”
 
Jeff Madoff: And what is that that it does?
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, they think it's a hierarchy and it's a pecking order rather than, I've got a Unique Ability, and they've obviously hired me. And I said, “You have to understand, we're not stupid about what we're doing.” This is not to the same person. It's just a series of conversations that I'm portraying here. And I said, “Everybody's got a Unique Ability. It's just the question is, what is the setting where you can do teamwork with other people's Unique Ability?” And I said, “That's the hard thing.” And I said, “I would say 99% of entrepreneurial companies don't have any feel for this. You got the boss and you have the employees, and the employees are pretty well disposable parts.”
 
Jeff Madoff: And how do you mean that?
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, they go through a lot of people. A company goes through a lot of people, and we notice a point where people are into teamwork and they reach a certain stage in their development, and then it becomes status. They have status, their team leader, or they have 10 people who, from a reporting stage, they're under them, and then they start buying into the status. I'm really alert about this. And I said, “He stopped growing.” They said, “Well, we're having difficulty with it.” And I said, “No, no. He stopped growing. Everything else is growing, and he stopped growing.”
 
Jeff Madoff: Interesting.
 
Dan Sullivan: There's a tension now. Everything has to be growing. Everybody has to be growing. We're getting bigger. The cashflow is going up, profits are going up. We keep jumping to a higher level of entrepreneur, and we have multiple programs that are, you start here, you go here and you go here. And I said, “Everybody's got to be growing.” And that means that it's like live theater. It's a new audience, and you can't expect to do tonight what you did last night.
 
Jeff Madoff: Yeah. It's really interesting, the notion of you stopped growing.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. You stopped growing. Now it's about you.
 
Jeff Madoff: Right, right. And what's so interesting about seeing a play multiple times, I mentioned to you, I think before we started recording, there was a bit that Stanley, who plays Logan, I saw for the first time last night. And it's just this little nuance to his character making fun of the Spangler character and got a big laugh.
 
Dan Sullivan: Because it's a ridiculous character.
 
Jeff Madoff: And so when Stanley did this, it got a big laugh, but it's also a great example of he keeps growing that character. And that's true of everybody.
 
Dan Sullivan: It's a live creature.
 
Jeff Madoff: That's right. That's right. And so the good actors don't stop. They stay, of course, faithful to the script. They don't add any soliloquies, but they do things that deepen the character and deepen the portrayal.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, it becomes real.
 
Jeff Madoff: That's right. That's right.
 
Dan Sullivan: It becomes real.
 
Jeff Madoff: Which is, I think a great example of those that don't stop growing. It's got to get boring if you're doing the same thing, performance after performance, and you-
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, when it gets boring, you become boring.
 
Jeff Madoff: That's right. That's right.
 
Dan Sullivan: Because it's flat.
 
Jeff Madoff: That's right.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, it's leftover.
 
Jeff Madoff: No, that's right. And I think that's another thing that's kind of interesting about it, and I mean, I think there's so much in theater that applies to business in terms of those collaborations of those things that you have the discipline yourself to keep exploring and the curiosity to do.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well. I mean, theater, which goes back thousands of years, is real life with the boring parts left out.
 
Jeff Madoff: Well, that was Hitchcock's statement about making movies. That's right. And so it's a fascinating, fascinating journey. I can't think of anything I'd rather be doing, even though there are times that it's an uphill trudge. What isn't?
 
Dan Sullivan: A lot of new synapses are being formed here.
 
Jeff Madoff: That's right. That's right. And there are moments that are so much fun too. Little breakthroughs and those little things of also helping each other. Yeah, yeah.
 
Dan Sullivan: Timing.
 
Jeff Madoff: That's fun. You get the feedback immediately. It's not like, we'll have to market test this and put this to committee, and you do it. It's like doing standup comedy. You get immediate feedback and you can't explain to somebody who didn't laugh why they should, because it's funny. So that doesn't work. And I find that interesting.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Anyway, this is great. But again, it's a pleasure on my part. I've been rewarded 10 times over any money that we've invested. So Babs and I are just delighted to be along for the journey.
 
Jeff Madoff: And I'm delighted you are along. I really am grateful for the support. Thank you.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. You got the money and you also got moral support along the way.
 
Jeff Madoff: That's right. That's right.
 
Dan Sullivan: I don't know how moral it was, but it was important.
 
Jeff Madoff: But it was important. Yeah, that's true. Well, I think once again, true to our name, Dan.
 
Dan Sullivan: We talked about anything and everything.
 
Jeff Madoff: We did. We did. So signing off for my friend Dan Sullivan and me Jeff Madoff. Thanks for listening.
 
Dan Sullivan: Thank you.
 
Jeff Madoff: Thanks for joining us today on our show Anything and everything, if you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend. For more about me and my work, visit acreativecareer.com and madoffproductions.com. To learn more about Dan and Strategic Coach, visit strategiccoach.com.