Ronald Macdonald is the nephew of Dick and Mac Macdonald, the founders of Macdonalds. Ron has been a major influence in early fast food and has been involved in the beginnings of the whole fast food industry, even helping the likes of Dave Thomas get their start. Ron is now a serial entrepreneur and his influence has been felt worldwide in food distribution, real estate and charity work.
Date: August 18, 2020
Episode: 15
Title: Norman Farrar introduces Ronald McDonald, a serial entrepreneur and is known as America’s Expert on Hamburgers and a real estate sales agent.
Subtitle: “Veni, vidi, vici , I came; I saw; I conquered.” – Julius Caesar
Final Show Link: https://iknowthisguy.com/episodes/14-ron-macdonald/
In this episode of I Know this Guy..Norman Farrar introduces Ronald McDonald, a serial entrepreneur and is known as America’s expert on hamburgers all while being a leading real estate agent
Ronald Macdonald is the nephew of Dick and Mac McDonald, the founders of McDonalds. Ron has been a major influence in early fast food and has been involved in the beginnings of the whole fast food industry, even helping the likes of Dave Thomas to get their start. Ron is now a serial entrepreneur and his influence has been felt worldwide in food distribution, real estate and charity work.
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Norman 0:00
Ron, if you’ve got one quote that you live by, what would it be?
Ron 0:06
From Julius Caesar. “Veni, vidi, vici , I came; I saw; I conquered.”
Norman 0:20
Hey everyone. Welcome to another episode of I Know this Guy, the podcast where we dive deep into the lives of some of the most interesting people I know. Before we get started, please like and subscribe to I Know this Guy wherever you get your podcasts. By the way, my kids want me to say something about ringing a bell. What the hell is a bell?
Hayden 0:50
So Dad, I was looking at the spreadsheet today and I really didn’t believe my eyes.
Norman
Well, Hayden, your eyes are correct. We’re going to be talking with Ronald MacDonald today and he is the nephew of Dick and Mac McDonald, the founders of McDonald’s, not Ray Kroc, Dick and Mac McDonald. He worked on the very first restaurant and he’s worked with all sorts of different franchises. He’s at all sorts of different businesses and this is going to be one hell of a podcast.
Hayden 1:22
Amazing. Well, let’s get started.
Norman
When I tell people about you, Hey, I know Ron MacDonald.
Norman 1:31
They don’t understand that you are the Ron MacDonald. Your uncles started McDonald’s, correct?
Ron 1:37
Uncles, Yeah.
Norman 1:39
Yeah. Uncles. They started McDonald’s and you worked in that first McDonald’s, didn’t you?
Ron 1:45
Yeah. When I was a kid, they used to send me out there in the summer so I could learn how to be a good businessman as a kid and the only thing I did was work for free, cleaning deep fryers and making french fries.
Norman 1:58
I’d really like to dig into that whole story. Because you were telling me, back in the day, about how and what happened, the real story behind it. And now there has been a movie about it, but you’ve tried to write a book and you’ve been blocked.
Ron 2:15
Well, we did write one book and we did it when Dick was still alive. You might remember this one. Oh, the complete hammer. And thank God I got to publish before Richard passed, just before he passed. We had some real issues. I wrote the history of the hamburger, the history of fast food and the history of the family up to the point when we sold to Ray Kroc. We went to McDonald’s and we asked for access to the archives so that we could get some of the photos and they said, send us the manuscript. So I did and then they sent me a nice letter which I still have down here for posterity from their attorneys, saying, we can’t stop you from using your name because it’s who you are and we can’t stop you from writing a book. But we don’t think you’ve painted Mr. Kroc in a good light so we’re not going to give you access to anything and that was it.
Ron 3:25
The truth is difficult sometimes for people to accept because when you have a mega billion dollar corporation that has an image to keep up and the money to do so. It’s just like the movie that they did with Michael Keaton called, The Founder. If he was going to found something, he should have had Kroc burgers and they ought to be offering a big crock. They shouldn’t be putting up this. This was started out of the brainchild of Richard and Maurice McDonald’s. 1948, they had the burger, McDonald brothers burger bar. They changed it around 1955 that’s when they came up with a new menu and created a completely new dynamic in America called fast food. People don’t understand the amount of science that was behind that. Mac and Dick drew out the entire restaurant on their tennis court and did time and motion studies going back and forth to make sure it was going to be efficient. Okay, moving equipment and how it was handled. Then we had a problem because the equipment available at that time didn’t support this kind of industry. Back then there was no such thing as a heat lamp for keeping food hot. So Richard went to a machine shop and took a bunch of old cowl rod heaters, heaters ahead, big metal rods in them that glowed and he had it designed to fit over the French fries and the burgers, so keep them warm. But he didn’t patent them which he should have or he would have gotten notoriety for that. The grills of that day did not have grease rings around them. They were just flat. Grease would go off the sides and be caught in some nasty catch all. So he had those machined all the way around and he made sure that the heat was even across the entire grill so that they could cook huge numbers. We even had a problem when we started having the guys add ketchup and mustard because they would use a squeeze model and one guy would go flop and the other guy will pop and it wasn’t consistent. So he went and designed this unit that would hold a number 10 can which is the big cans. Put the whole can of mustard in there and every time you pull the trigger it was a measured dollap. So it was actually always the same and then of course, we went to all disposables, which was a first, right, everything was disposable. And even the spatulas that were available, we had to have those made because we needed a stronger, heavier spatula. The other ones had too much tempered to them. So it was a lot of work getting it done. We developed the system that’s in use today and every french fry that you eat, called blanching. Prior to that, and in some restaurants that you go to now like five guys, they still don’t blanch, they cut the potatoes, wash them off, and then throw them in a grease, we didn’t. After we cut our potatoes, we blanched them which is like part boiling in a beef bouillon mixture. Then we let it dry and they were prefried in an all beef shortening and then we let it dry and then it was fried last time. So that was more to it than just opening up a burger joint and getting it done. And of course, Ray Kroc was not our first franchise salesman, he happened to be a franchisee who sold us milk cake mixers. But the way McDonald’s puts it out, even the medallions that were in every store, Ray Kroc, the founder and the first store was in Oak Brook, Illinois, what a lie. It was not. It was just San Bernardino, California. But when you got that much money behind you, Norm, it’s kind of tough to fight and go out yelp. And as you know, being around me, I have a big mouth, so I used to yell about it a lot. When my book came out, in 1995, the main character for McDonald’s was Ronald McDonald everywhere with the Hamburger and the works. Once my book came out, I did 1600 radio interviews, and I was on a lot of TV shows. And overnight there was no more Ronald McDonald commercials anywhere, anywhere. And the photos we were able to get offline cease to exist.
Ron 8:20
So they did everything they could to wipe out the existence of Ronald. Even though I’m still here, okay. And a little tough, they still have the charity so they can’t get rid of the Ronald McDonald Houses couldn’t come back and change the name on them. But you don’t see Ronald, like you used to. Soon as the world found out there was a real Ronald, and I’m the only one. It kind of got quiet.
Norman 8:51
Talking about your two uncles, tell me a little bit about each one of them. How are they different from each other? One more technical than the other one did more marketing.
Ron 9:04
No, Dick was the genius of the family, really was smart engineering, good. Mac was just a good hard worker. I mean, they work the store every day, seven days a week for always, and they always work together. You know, they came out to California from New Hampshire, and they went to work for a comedian named Max Senate. They moved all kinds of backgrounds, backdrops and scenery and stuff like that for Max and his movies. Then they decided this was a career choice and they bought up an old vaudeville theater, named at The Beacon and turned it into a movie house and then when they turned it into that. Here again, they ran the projectors, they ran the concession stand. After a few years of finding out the only place they made money was in the concession stand, they thought this is not the way to go. So then they opened up a hotdog stand and sold hotdogs and aren’t shoes. Dick was very enterprising. He went out and found that when Sunkist went through and picked the groves, they didn’t go back a second time to get the other loose ones that fell, and the ones that hadn’t been ready, so he cut a deal and buy those for 25 cents a bushel. Came back, they would make the squeezy orange juice and blend it with ice. Well, somebody came along and thought it was a good idea and started on the joyous sound of that. So what’s the rip? I can’t tell ya, your Burger King started because they came to McDonald’s to buy franchises. Dave Thomas came out there. Old man Hardee came out there. When you started Hardee’s, everybody came to visit Mac and Dick and they opened the houses. Come look, show you how we’re doing it. Then we’ve had probably about a dozen competitors spin off from that. Including the guy that used to sell us the equipment. He ended up opening up Burger Chef to try to compete. Everybody wanted to be McDonald’s, everybody. But most of them really didn’t understand what made McDonald’s McDonald’s and the dynamics behind it and that’s a tough thing. So that’s what I did for, oh god, 40 years restaurant consulting and stuff and helping people understand Supply Chain Management online. What proprietary products are how you secure working with the rebates that come in from work with the national accounts and this is a game of pennies, not dollars. And Mike used to say that my grandmother started saying it with her Gaelic accent. Amanda watch the pennies in dollars or watch themselves could I say as a penny? And Richard used to say, when you’re making pennies, no one wants to take it away from me. And when you take $1 they don’t want to come. So he’s, they were pretty smart at that.
Norman 12:33
You’ve worked in multiple, I know you were just mentioning being a consultant. But you’ve worked with Kentucky Fried Chicken and Wendy’s and all these other companies as well, haven’t you?
Ron 12:45
Well, I never worked for KFC. I went and opened up Dave Thomas’s first franchise in South Carolina. I was very young and that explained to the franchisees that Ron knows more about Fast Food then you guys, so please listen. Then I built the western family Steakhouse chain with Bill Britton and built the Longhorn Steakhouse chain with Alex Raymond Tannen. I worked for Ponderosa Steakhouse and managed that. Developed a three bean salad that they ended up using all of their stuff. Then I started the ale house and sold it, I started the villains and sold it. You know, I would take a concept and move it to a new level and then sell it. That’s work in turn. I got bored so I couldn’t want to stick with him for a whole long time. And of course, some of that’s my greatest success stories and one of my greatest disaster stories. You have to learn but I always learned from my failures just like I tried to learn from my successes. But a hard lesson learned is a lesson learned, a little stronger.
Norman 14:03
So I have to tell you, you are a foodie. And you have, and Hayden, you’re on this line. I took one of your recipes that we had a hotdog competition. And you just said, I have got the hot dog, the winning hot dog. Try it, you’ll love it, you’ll never go back to another hot dog. I can tell you whenever I cook this hot dog, the kids line up and they love it. So tortilla, right, the tortilla, a haka, or put the hot dog in the tortilla. You cut it open, you put cheese with peppers in it, and you deep fry it. And Yep, it’s a heart attack on a plate, but I’ll eat a few of those every time I cook them.
Ron 14:50
Well, every time I’ve entered a contest with that, we call it a donkey tail. We end up winning and of course you take a good all beef hot dog, you split it. You soak it in hot water. It’s called leaching for a few minutes. Then you place it in a flour tortilla. Make sure you trim the edges of the tortilla so they’re squared. When you put the hot dog in there I use Sorento’s tacos cheese blend and put it in there with all the seasonings, wrap it tight and deep fry it for just less than two minutes, turn it and then you prepare some nice jalapeno mustard and dip it like an egg roll right into the muster and and when you do it for our d’oeuvres, we cut them and put toothpicks through little ones. And they come out great. I write cook books.
Norman 15:53
My mouth is watering already thinking. I remember you telling me, the only way to eat a hamburger is with mustard.
Ron 16:09
I think there’s a curse on people who put ketchup on hamburgers. You know why McDonald’s colors are red and yellow? A little history there. It’s the color of the flag of Scotland were Scottish. A red lion on a yellow field. It gets mustard and ketchup.
Ron16:30
I know you’ve had a very colorful life. So what can tell us a little bit more about what you’ve done in your history?
Speaker 16:40
Oh, God. I’ve been to 56 countries. I served President Bush for six years on the Business Advisory Council. I represented a small little group called Mensa when I was there. I helped open up Albania with Dr. Berisha and Prime Minister Maxi after Ambrosia was overdone. Worked in, gosh, Slovakia and worked in there with them trying to develop a new aircraft plant. So I’ve been all over the world and done business in lots of places and had a great life. A lot of charity work and had hospitals we delivered to Africa. I used to spend time over in Lomé, Togo in West Africa. I had a piece of a company called Eurofruit. I used to own 50% of Handel House in Germany, which is a machinery manufacturing company. We had oil and gas. When I was in Texas, as you probably remember, and Glencoe Trade, Glencoe Oilfield equipment, and you helped me try to get into domains and start our media.
Norman
That’s right.
Ron
Which I lost my tail on because the stock market crashed right after we put all that money into
Norman 18:16
Oh, I remember that.
Ron 18:18
There were 8000 domains I was paying for. We get all ready to do a public launch and the .com market edge.
Norman 18:29
So I guess it’s really similar to what’s going on right now. There’s so many businesses out there, some are thriving. Online businesses, for the most part, are thriving. But there’s a lot of people out of work and there’s a lot of businesses that are going under.
Ron 18:44
I can tell you stories that make you cry. Bar owners, especially because the bars are still not allowed to open. But the rent goes on, utilities go on, insurance goes on. The employees have been laid off because they can’t get back to work. What are you going to do? Ah, I think the failure rate of small restaurants, the Mom-and-Pop is probably going to be in the 50-70% range Why? They can’t survive. Very few of us in the business ever make big money in the restaurants. I mean, people think you have a great business. Look at the volume they got. Let’s take, let’s analyze one. Alright, right now you can get a quarter pound hamburger for 99 cents in most places, whether it’s Checkers or Rally’s or even McDonald’s when they run through. Have you ever priced ground beef at the grocery store? I mean, you can’t find ground beef for under $3 a pound. So that means a quarter pound burger is 75 cents. Now even if we cheap in it, like most of the burgers you get out there. They use a combination of muscle meat and organ meat, okay, so it’s cheaper than that. But how cheap can you make it? Then you’ve got a button that’s going to run you in 20 cent range. Then you have condiments, utilities, the wrapper, the labor. And on top of that you’re paying a franchise or 6%. And then you’re paying 2% of your gross for advertising. So it’s 8% off the top. So when you start doing the numbers , you have to do a huge volume to make any money at all and it only takes a stumble like this to hurt you. Like in the places that weren’t set up for drive thru. They’ve suffered terribly. I know some donut franchises that got out and they didn’t plan for big drive thru business. There’s a lot of these food courts. What do you think happens to the restaurants in the food courts? There’s nobody in the shopping malls and yet you’re having to pay these huge fees every month. And the downhill is, what do you think’s gonna happen to those landlords? They own all this property that’s based and predicated on return on investment. And if they can’t open, they can’t pay the landlord. The landlord can’t pay the bank. So you’re going to be looking at a lot of options coming up here, a lot of bankruptcies, a lot of failures and a lot of destroyed lives, which Yeah, What about you? We were talking the other night. I don’t know if your listeners know that. This big guy used to be a sparring partner for Lennox Lewis, the heavyweight champion world, and he even knocked him on his ass once.
Norman 21:53
I didn’t say that ever.
Ron 21:59
And now I look at him with his beard.
Norman 22:04
That’s where all the power is right here.
Norman
You’ve had quite a career yourself, young man.
Ron 22:12
You gotta brag on your prowess a little bit, not just interview us. Oh, what’s gonna happen? What’s gonna happen? What do you think’s gonna happen now business wise to this economy to this world? When we finally get past this, or the question is will we get past it? Now, we all have ideas and we all have theories, I’m sure as to why it started, how it started, where it started, and who started it. But no matter how you look at it, you cannot deny that your life is going to be changed forever over this. Some may be good, some of it not so good. I mean, we just got kids to go outside and play and now we tell them it’s safer to stay inside. Your entire socialization right now is like this.
Ron 23:14
This is not the way we socialize. You and I, my God, we used to go out and I’d have 15 or 20 people show up for a happy hour, we’d have a good time and everybody get to know each other and we laugh and we’d have fun and those days are gone. They’re just not there. You talk about the Mom-and-Pop shops. Unless they have an internet presence, they’re gone, they’re done, they’re toast. I mean, Sally with a small boutique that tried to attract people on a local basis. That’s not gonna happen. I look at the shoe chains that have closed up. Even Neiman Marcus closing down, JC Penney’s closing up. You can’t even imagine the impact that’s going to be the change the way you’re life is. How many people now are used to ordering through Grubhub or DoorDash? I mean, let’s don’t go out to eat. Some say, let’s stay home, make it come to us. If you told me when I was back in that restaurant business starting the company like DoorDash, and Grubhub would be making money delivering I’d say, Hello, only pizza guys deliver. Now, I just got notice from Wah Wah. Some sandwiches were delivered from them. I mean, everybody’s into the delivery now. But that seems to be what it is. I mean, Skype, look at us. We’re on zoom. So instead of my friend coming down to visit me, I talked to him 3000 miles away over an internet line.
Norman 25:05
And you, you were working in oil. I remember that. Yeah. You knew the president, or you know. And no, not yet. And what were you doing? You were running? You were the chair of
entrepreneur, young entrepreneur. What was it that President Bush had you set up in?
Ron 25:31
I ended up becoming part of the President’s Business Advisory Council.
Norman
Oh, that’s what it was.
Ron
Yeah. Yeah. And basically, we were focused on small to medium sized business, what can we do? What tax relief can we give them? How can we encourage them to survive? You know, this country was based and founded on small business, not big business. I mean, it wasn’t until the turn of the century, the last century. Then big business really became an industrialized part of it. It happened in World War 1. And then was Henry Ford and Standard Oil and a few others starting to get a big. Think about it. It’s not that long ago. It’s a 50s and 60s when franchising started, and when franchising came about , now you had brands that spread all over. Used to be the only franchises you had were car dealers. Now it’s, come on, everything you want to from one hour martinizing, house cleaning, I mean, you can’t throw a rock and hit a business. It’s not franchised up somehow, because the entrepreneur spirit is still there. But the ability to gamble and take that risk of failure is not in our DNA anymore. Now it’s easier to buy an interest in an established brand than try to build your own and I can understand that. The last chain I started was Don Benito’s Burritos and I came up with the concept , a regular burrito concept on a heat and serve basis. If you remember, I used on Dixie Southern foods and started the heat and serve trend for barbecue. The first guy to ever put him serve barbecue out. So then everybody had to cook their own or go to a barbecue place. Anyway, I sold that to a gentleman up in Kentucky. And I just don’t see it going anywhere anymore. A friend of mine called me last week, good friend Bobby McKenna. You met him. He’s an attorney here in town. You’ve had drinks with him here. And he’s looked at a concept that is a health food type concept, a smoothie place with Kava and a few other things. says hey I need you to get involved in this and help me lay this out. Tell me what we’re going to do.
Ron 28:17
The way we save money if we don’t do it, because you can’t make money right now. You just can’t. Rent is super cheap because so many failures are out there. Ellie and I went to Tarpon Springs yesterday, you remember Tarpon? Great community up there where congressman Bilirakis is and his family and we walked up and down like we have for decades enjoying the sponge docks and the water and and Greek food, which is good and everywhere we look, Norm, it was a restaurant for lease fully equipped. clothes for rent, on and on and on. The souvenir shops shut down. I mean just sign up saying, for rent, the owner will vacate with two weeks notice. So the landlord’s keeping them in there just to have somebody in. And that’s not going to change anytime soon. And just like I would tell you and I told Bobby, do not put money into one of these ventures at this time, unless you need a tax write off, and if you need a tax write off then we ought to get them all. But your chances of really being able to initiate something new and exciting. Your chances are less than 50-50 and that’s not good. That’s what we were empowered to do by President Bush. Try to figure out how to make business thrive. But how do we make it thrive in this atmosphere? We have the same kind of social unrest we had back in the 70s. When we came back from Vietnam, you had the same kind of Spanish Flu disaster, which crippled the world. And it’s like a one two punch and we’re just waiting for the third when everybody’s anticipating. When are we going to have another spike? So it’s like, we’re not, you’re a boxer. How many punches? Can you take body blows? Before you can’t recover? And stay in a room? And we’re looking at a lot of that right now. Yeah.
Norman 30:43
Yeah, I’ve wondered about that myself. You know, what is going to be the next one? Is it going to be the spike? If you take a look at the Spanish flu, it happened, it wasn’t the first time around, well wiped out everybody was when it hit the second time around when it went to Europe. So Ron, why don’t you tell us about meeting the President? I remember that you had called me to come down and you said, Hey, Norm, you want to meet the president. I’m going to be meeting him. Come on down and get to meet President Bush. So I got on a plane. Next day flew down. And pretty excited. Anyways, the Secret Service came and I guess they blocked me. Because I was a foreign national. I didn’t have security clearance. But anyways, you got through. So how did that go?
Ron 31:35
That was a mess. But the Secret Service came and got me and I was the first one to greet him when he got off the plane. And we were doing a fundraiser for Congressman Bilirakis and he came down to help us out with that. And the first thing you did, I hadn’t remembered I had my hat and boots on. I worked like it was still in Texas. And he looked at me Ronald looks like you ought to be having coffee with me and Crawford instead of being here in Tampa. What can I say, Mr. President, you’re right. It was when I knew him. I was in Texas. And we belong to the same oil man’s club and all. That was, he was a hell, he wasn’t even Governor then. He just owned a baseball team. You know, when I first got to know him, he is quite a person.
Norman 32:25
Yeah. And not just the baseball team, by the way.
Ron 32:30
No, but he became a great Governor. He became a super president and he’d done a ton with the country. So as a dad.
Ron 32:40
Yeah, and so I was just gonna say we can’t forget about Jeb. Yeah, we get a lot for Florida down here.
Norman 32:45
Yeah. No, I remember just and one of the other things just being riding on your coattails walking around. I was always four feet behind. There’s Ron, and there’s Norm about four feet behind, but just being able to go and meet some of the people. You remember, Oh, do you remember this? There was a group of people that came in. They came in with $1 billion and they were doing something in the US. And you had a meeting with about four or five different people. I went with you and they were representing the Sultan of Brunei?
Ron 33:28
Yeah, that was Dr. Mohammed Solly.
Norman
And there we go.
Ron
Yeah, and it was 3.2 billion. Yeah, we were all set to build Hollywood here in Florida. I mean, another Hollywood. We were negotiating on the acreage they had built in Dubai, the largest radio recording center over there. And we had a lot of money lined up to bring it in and try and get it done and did our best to try and get it done. But the West Coast does not like competition.
They have enough trouble with Vancouver, which steals a lot of TV shows. The idea of what we have here in Florida, Oh my god, we’re right to work state number one. That means that the union powers don’t have any power here. Okay. That was one of the first issues right there. The unions wanted a stronger negotiating position. If we were going to do this because everybody’s in Union out there from screenwriters to actors to you name it, cameraman or in the Union. I mean, and then of course, we had great weather here. We looked at a location between Tampa and Orlando. Congressman Bilirakis was going to help us get an off ramp right at the property and Governor Chris flew down. Remember, he flew in his plane Charlie, and Charlie and I are still good friends, even though he’s now a Democrat. And I do talk to him on a regular basis. The state was all ready to help us everywhere we could. That was an exciting project. I really, really, really wished that had gone through. It would have meant tens of thousands of jobs here in Florida, and it would have brought industry to us like no tomorrow. And I do I try to put things like that together. I still do on a much smaller scale. I’m working with a minority group now that has a SAM registration and 8 (a) registration that is Certified Minority registrations. And we’re starting to manufacture masks, surgical masks right here in Florida. In the US and everything in it is American, the material, the elastic, works. We have got to stop having our dependence on foreign entities for things like our pharmaceuticals, our safety equipment, every one of those N95 mass were coming from China. They send us a disease and they make billions selling us to masks and respirators and gowns. And here American industry suspension and so we sacrifice too much for cheap labor. And I think America is learning that dealing with the lowest bidder is not always the most beneficial thing for this country or for us. You realize all the antibiotics, all the antibiotics are coming from China. They cut us off. We’ll have people dying of minor things because they can’t get the Amoxicillin they need the Penicillin they need or something else, because it’s all manufactured overseas.
Norman 37:04
You’ve started a lot of different businesses. And can you tell me what’s been your most successful business or anything in life?
Ron 37:12
I don’t know how you would say even go there. I mean, like, how do you measure success? Is success measured in the amount of money you made? Is it measured in the number of jobs you created? Is it measured in the people you manage to help? I mean, what is success? It’s a really broad question. And when you get into it, Norm. I can be really proud of a lot of things I’ve got from delivering hospitals and Africa to helping literally hundreds of small businesses in lots of ways survive, and I’m still doing it. I’m still mentoring on a regular basis when most people are retired. I had meetings last week. I’m helping some new companies, not necessarily startups, but giving them a new perspective on how to re-energize or restructure their business, especially now that supply chains are disrupted. You’ve got to look at some really new aspects of how you’re going to do business. You cannot just rely on getting on a computer and dropping an order online and expecting stuff to come in. You have to know you have a stable supply line on what you’re going to do. I don’t know how I would even answer that. I had done what I could and I helped in lots of ways. I’ve got very few complaints. I mean, as I said, I’m turning 74 next month. I’ve been all these countries, got the same great wife for 54 years and got great friends. One of them is sitting across from me now on a monitor, and I don’t lose track of my friends. So I’m a rich guy in lots of ways. Health issues, got a few. But I think God keeps me around just to piss off people because I’m still here, you know? And hopefully he’s going to keep me around because a lot more people need pissing off. I’ll be glad to do it.
Norman 39:26
And we need to go back to our fishing hole.
Ron 39:30
Yeah, before, and I don’t want you to say we’re going to wait for my hundredth birthday. Okay. Hey, we planned for the 75th at the worst.
Norman 39:41
At the worst. Okay. You have my word. I don’t want to use the word failure. But are there any things that didn’t go your way? Why didn’t they and what did you learn from?
Ron 39:57
There’s always failures. Now If anybody tells you they learn from success, they are lying. You learn from failure. You know that from boxing, you know if you’ve learned how to keep your left hand up, because you got hit with a right cross too many times, so you finally learn. It takes pain. Oh, there’s a lot of things I would have done differently. I mean, I look back and some of the choices I made and some of the things I didn’t do always come. But I never found it helpful to reflect too much in the past because then when you do, you can’t look forward to the future. I get the biggest question I get all the time is, Jezz, I’m surprised you’re still working and I get that from my wife too. But I’m one of those individuals. If I don’t have that daily challenge of something, I look at so many of my friends, Norm, that’s my age, I’ve got one, he’s younger than me. He’s 60 and he’s retired from the Army. And then he worked for the post office and retired from them. And I’ve watched him, he’s physically great, but I’ve watched him mentally atrophy because he doesn’t exercise that muscle up here to keep himself going. And look at you, you’ve made some big transitions in your life. And what you’ve done, you’re doing one now. If we talked five years ago, and you said you were going to be in a broadcasting going podcast, you said, not me. I’ve got to get rid of a camera and do that stuff.
Norman
Right?
Ron
Yeah, you know what I’d say, I know you’d do well. Life hands us opportunities and disappointments and it’s a matter of your character how you deal with those that make the difference. I wrote two books in the past, last year. The history of African Martial Arts and history of Japanese Aikido. I’m working on three more books right now. At the same time, I’m running three businesses and I’m still trying to get developed on my websites that we have. I find it gives me purpose to have things to do. Some of the biggest mistakes, please, I was spending 80,000 a year to keep 8000 domains up. I mean, I lost probably. I think when we did 10 Power Media, I lost a little over 1.6 million. I lost $3 million on Tunis. Of course I couldn’t stop 9/11. It was a good idea but still, it was a failure regardless of the purpose. Just like if I bought that office building. My God, I’d be making payments out of my savings. Because I can’t get tenants in it right now. I don’t think I’d ever go back and look at it again, even if they dropped the price 6- 700,000 because I don’t see it recovering. See people are used to working from home now like you. They’re telecommuting, they don’t need to go in. The new house that I’m building. My office has been set up strategically, so that on one wall, I have a backdrop over here for when I do my podcast, and when you flip around on the other wall, I’ve got a smartboard. So if I have to do any of my coaching and presentations, it’s there. You remember, I used to go to my office and I had all those people working in there doing all our work. That’s not gonna happen again. I’m never gonna try and put together an office with 40-50 employees. If I did, I’d hire contract labor. People are working from home. I do that now. I’ve got a webmaster in Virginia and another one up in South Carolina. Yeah, one over here in New Tampa, an SEO guy. But I don’t ask him to come to the office anymore. When I don’t need that overhead expense. And we change the dynamics of what we do. So yeah, I would change a lot of things. I would have been in nanotechnology. When I got out of the oil business, I would have gone right into nanotech and stayed in there. I own a very small piece of a company with some hot patents in Texas. And I could have spent more time with them. And that’s global water. And we’ve got some new technology coming out that’s killer on some filtration systems. But I didn’t have time for that move on, move on, though. Can’t dwell on it though. The only thing I’m really really sad about is I never really got to write that book while my uncle was alive. And you know, we had people lined up in Hollywood want to do a movie on it that was before Michael Keaton’s. But here again, it’s just one of those great projects for the future. We’ll get to it in another decade or so. Norman
There we go.So Ron, you like your, you’ve liked cigars for many years. In fact, your family was. Were you living in Cuba?
Ron 46:01
Yeah. Until I was 12.
Norman 46:05
Yeah. You had some health issues way back in the day. You weren’t gonna smoke and I got your humidor and some of the Pre-Castro cigars in it. So thank you so much.
Ron 46:18
Those were a gift from Dr. Manish who was married to Princess Sophela of Saudi Arabia (?). And I remember when he gave me that box, he gave me this beautiful box of cigars and wow, these, these are awesome. These Cohibas are that great. Then I went out with the son and handed one or two amounts of Barnees, What are you doing? I don’t mind sharing my cigar keys. Those are Pre-Castro Cubans. Dr. Manish bought those at auction and a nine hundred pounds cigar. God, so I kept those cigars, Norm. And I had one on my birthday every year until they finally ran out. They were so strong. You can only have one of them. My key was beautiful. It was beautiful. I mean it was I learned how to dive and fish off of model right where the castle is on the point there. I used to watch this guy rollers as they would sit on the side of the streets hand rolling all those cigars, putting them in blocks and pressing them down to hold their shay. Yeah. Yeah, pretty good. Pretty good. Good memories.
Norman 47:50
You don’t remember the first time we met?
Ron 47:53
I would have to think on it.
Norman 47:55
Okay. The first time we met was through a mutual friend Rex. He said you got to come and meet Ron. So I went over and we were in a bar. We were standing beside each other. I didn’t know it was you. You were handing out cigars to everybody left, right and center. We started talking and I was telling you how much I like cigars. And you knew I knew a little bit about cigars. So you said, you reached in your pocket and you go, these ones here. You took the labels off. And you were giving them out to people that didn’t know anything about cigars. You know, why waste a good cigar? Then he said, Oh, but in this pocket, and you gave me a cigar and that’s how we met.
Ron 48:40
Yeah, well, I always used to carry two types because you get people who will take a cigar and smoke it but cannot appreciate it. And then you have the ones who like mecanizados and some of the other great cigars that Iused to carry all the time, Dunhills, Oh my god. But I get the other ones that were like two bucks a stick. And if somebody wanted one and I didn’t know if they were really into cigars and the first thing I asked you, I’m sure, was what you like: a light or dark wrapper. Because if you don’t care, then you don’t know cigars. Okay, because we all have our own tastes in the flavor profiles.
Norman 49:35
And what were you doing in Africa?
Ron 49:38
Business. Always business.
Norman 49:42
Yeah. Oh, you were setting up some. You were working with hospitals.
Ron 49:47
I did some of that. Yeah, some charity work, but mostly, I was in business. Yeah, I bought produce from Holland, mushrooms from Holland. In Morocco, I would bring in fruits and vegetables. I was in Yugoslavia when it was Yugoslavia because Spain stopped exporting Spanish black hams for all the Tapis in Europe and I was buying 10,000 Dalmatian Ham and of Yugoslavia and importing them over to Europe. Front legs out of Bangladesh, mango slices and mango flavorings for RC cola out of Pakistan. So yeah, I had a water company in Pakistan with a friend and I had businesses all over the world. I loved it back then. That’s, when travel was a little different, though.
Norman 50:49
So look, we’re gonna be winding down here and at the end of every episode, I have a question that I ask every guest. Ron, do you know a guy?
Ron 51:04
I talked to a friend of mine, an inventor, brilliant guy, smart as a whip with a very famous name as well. Anthony Tesla.
Norman
Wow
Ron,
And I asked Anthony if he would appear on your show and he said he would be more than glad to if I asked him.
Norman 51:26
Well, that’s fantastic.
Ron 51:28
I will get you his information and Anthony invents all kinds of stuff. I think it runs in the genes and he’s super smart. He’s a CPA, a financial planner, inventor, businessman, all that stuff.
Norman 51:48
I appreciate you. I appreciate you coming on. I know you got a busy schedule, but I’m glad you made some time to get on and help us out with the podcast
Ron
And I wish you was doing it in person which I hopefully will do before that century runs out again.
Norman
Oh, yes, it will and I will be there. Hey guys and gals. Thanks for listening. For more great content. Please like, subscribe and follow I Know this Guy on all social media platforms.
Speaker 52:19
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