Especially for a World leader. Yeah.
Shelby Scarbrough: 12:44
Yeah. George Bush and both Bushes also had that capability. I don’t have, I don’t, I don’t have that kind of recall necessarily, but I do respect and admire the ability to connect with the individual, which all of those people have that ability to do. Yeah. And President Reagan’s, you know, I of course, I believed in what he believed in. And I really felt comfortable supporting his platform and the goals that he was trying to achieve for the country.
And he, he, he knew who he was and he stuck with it. And he was true to his, you know, his character traits. He was true to his beliefs. And I think those were really interesting and informative and formative positions for me as a young person.
John Corcoran: 13:36
You know, another thing that he’s kind of remembered for is just distilling things down to a very simple phrase or, you know, or an idea or something like that. He had very cute, you know, a lot of little, like, witticisms and things like that, where he would, you know, kind of distill down a big concept. And I think that that’s a true sign of intelligence, not using, you know, big words all the time that people don’t understand. But to articulate and to explain and communicate something in a way that people can understand, people often ask me about, you know, I’ve had the fortune of meeting three presidents now, possibly a fourth. And they’ve asked me a lot about the charisma around them, what it’s like.
And they all have kind of different charisma, you know. But it’s interesting, you know, to, to your point, like seeing those types of world leaders who’ve gotten in many cases, you know, come from very humble roots to the highest office in the land. They have to have incredible charisma, you know, even if they don’t remember someone’s name. Just when they talk to people, people walk away feeling like they were heard or feeling like that person knows me or understands me. That is a profound thing for sure.
Shelby Scarbrough: 14:51
This is true and just makes you want to help them achieve their goals.
John Corcoran: 14:56
And yeah, right. And that’s how they, you know, rally large groups of people to help them with the causes they’re working on. You go on from the White House to the State Department where you served as a protocol officer. What is that? What is a protocol officer?
Shelby Scarbrough: 15:11
So it’s very similar to the presidential advance, which is the office I was working in, in the White House where we handled the logistics for the principle involved. So at the White House, it was President Reagan, one client. Many venues, if you think of it that way. And with the State Department, there were many clients, meaning heads of state, kings, queens, prime ministers, foreign ministers. And that’s that’s no further down the rung than that.
Would we handle them and come into the country to visit the president of the United States? So fundamentally, there were maybe 3 or 4 venues. There was this White House, the State Department, Capitol Hill, Andrews Air Force Base, Blair House or the hotel that they were staying in, that kind of thing. So the program would be sort of standard, you know, because we treated all the guests similarly. Right.
That’s part of the protocol. On the other hand, the details were extremely different in each case, just because of the nature of who was coming, the culture, the idiosyncrasies of their relationship with the US, the policy situations going on at the time. So it was a dynamic in a different environment and very busy.
John Corcoran: 16:20
And that was such a fascinating thing about, you know, working at the White House. My job could be very mundane sometimes because I like sitting and writing. I mean, geez, these days it could be ChatGPT, right? You know? But I was sitting and writing letters and proclamations and this book over my shoulder here and things like that.
And so it could be quite mundane, but then I’d go to the bathroom and there would be the president of the United States arguing with the premier of China in the hallway like this, like with no cameras around and 50 security personnel. And they’re arguing over something, you know, with the translators up in there and it’s like, oh my God, you know.
John Corcoran: 16:55
But if you recall back during those experiences, you probably observed a lot of interesting world leaders and interesting dynamics. Kings, Queens, Shahs, presidents, maybe without naming names, any interesting stories from those experiences of world leaders that you saw? I don’t know, slap an underline or anything interesting like that.
Shelby Scarbrough: 17:20
I had a world leader who flew commercials. Okay, so that gives you the level of the leader, meaning the small country. Yeah. Because they didn’t have their own fleet, etc.. But they were at Dulles Airport and taking them out.
This was before TSA before nine over 11. So we called them the red coats. The security guys all wore red red coats or orange coats, maybe some orange coats. And so. So we were taking them through security.
And the Secret Service took the principal, the president of the country, around security as a courtesy and took him straight to the Air France lounge. And we took the rest of the delegation, including the ambassador, through security, and I was escorting them through security. Well, all of a sudden, all these orange coats or whatever they were at the time, TSA type security came surrounding the one bag that went through that was that the ambassador had carried and put on the x-ray machine and the x-ray. They all said, there’s a gun in here. And I looked at the ambassador and said, they say there’s a gun.
We need to open it up. He said, I can’t open it. And I said, well, it’s your bag. He says, no, it’s not my bag, it’s the president’s bag. And I said, okay, well, I guess we gotta go see the president.
So we went to the lounge and I had to say to the president, I’m sorry, we there’s a gun in here. We need to open it up, secure it, make sure that it’s separate from any ammunition. We will give it to the pilots. They will carry it and they will return it to you upon landing. And he was so mad, he was not very happy.
And I said, I’m sorry, this is the way it goes. And he said some, maybe they weren’t there. He said some other airline. And he said, well, they let me do it all the time. I go, well remind me not to fly with them.
John Corcoran: 19:03
You know. Yeah.
Shelby Scarbrough: 19:04
So, we did this and separated it out and everything. If he had just carried his own bag there, it just would have slipped through. He wouldn’t.
John Corcoran: 19:13
Have. Yeah.
Shelby Scarbrough: 19:13
He didn’t go through security and so, so when they went to go get on the plane, you know, I was there as the official representative representing the president of the United States to bid him farewell. And he wouldn’t shake my hand.
John Corcoran: 19:31
Well, reflecting back on that now, what was that like for you as a young woman? This is 35 years ago or something like that, representing the United States, having to stand up to a world leader and say, we are going into your bag. And that’s just one example of many times when you were representing the United States of America and you had to put your foot down and, you know, advocate for your position.
Shelby Scarbrough: 19:55
You know, it’s a really interesting question when I start to think back on it, because I didn’t know that I was thinking about the weight of it at the time. I just was doing what I knew my job to be. And it was to be both diplomatic, but make it happen and get the job done and do the right job. And I knew what the rules were, so I knew where we could bend the rules. I knew where, you know, and bending the rules isn’t really the right word, but where there’s flexibility in a yes or no.
Yeah. And to make something happen, that was our goal always was to try to make it work if we could. It wasn’t to be an impediment to anything because we were, in effect, an extension of the diplomacy of foreign policy in a way. So I recognize that we definitely knew that my colleagues were all super professional, and I had great, amazing people like I like Bunny Murdock. Catherine Murdock and Lucky Roosevelt.
My boss, the ambassador, and Julie Andrews, who is named Julie Petersmeyer. Now, those people were really great role models for me in teaching me the ropes on how to handle the protocol side of things. And certainly a lot of people in the White House, my boss Jim Hooley, etc. were just amazing teachers.
Shelby Scarbrough: 21:04
So they set the standard. They also one of the things that Jim Hooley said to me was, you know, we we work at the, you know, this you work as.
John Corcoran: 21:13
The pleasure of the party.
Shelby Scarbrough: 21:13
At the, at the pleasure of the president, but you do not there’s no job security, actually, as a political appointee, which is fascinating given that the government puts all these rules on companies to create job security, etc., but they don’t have it in a political spectrum. So they, you know, but he basically we were we were we were an extension of the president. We were an extension of the presidency beyond that president. So we were there to represent our country well. And that was that was really a number one importance in everything in how we conducted ourselves.
John Corcoran: 21:50
Right, right. Because the presidency rolls over every 4 to 8 years and the United States, you know, doesn’t end up starting a company called Practical Protocol. What was the idea behind that? What was the vision behind that?
Shelby Scarbrough: 22:04
Sort of what I knew how to do at that point. And I knew I wanted to start my own business because I’d had this great representation from my parents that it was an interesting life course, I guess. And, I knew how to put delegations together and logistics. And so I was very fortunate because at the secretariat of the National Security Council at the time, a guy named Bill Sitman, who has since passed, was asked by the Nelson Mandela Group. Nelson Mandela had recently been released from prison, and he was coming to the United States to see George Bush and other people and see Congress and.
ET cetera. And they, the group that was organizing it said, do you have anybody you suggest who could help us organize Washington? Because they just wanted somebody who knew what they were doing. And he said, oh, I have the right person for you. So Nelson Mandela was my very first client.
And that amazing, great trajectory from that point forward.
John Corcoran: 23:02
One of my most interesting interviews was interviewing his official photographer, who was his official photographer for the last ten years of his life, Mandela’s life. What was it like being around him? What did you learn from being around Nelson Mandela, especially that moment in time? You know, so dramatic. He comes out of 28 years of being in prison and Robbins Island.
What was it like when he came to the United States?
Shelby Scarbrough: 23:22
He was as humble and kind and soft spoken as you could ever imagine. And you? I talk about this so much that you could imagine being angry.
John Corcoran: 23:36
Embittered. Angry. Sure. Yeah.
Shelby Scarbrough: 23:36
Hardened person. And he was not anything like that. And his wife at the time, Winnie Mandela was actually more strident than he was. And I had a very interesting and lovely interaction with her, but it was sort of interesting to see the difference. When we went up to when something got lost, I think she had a headdress like, you know, that came in a box and we were literally walking around the hotel trying to find it in this loading dock and everything, because she knew what it looked like.
Because I’m coming with you. I’ll find it. So it was fun. I mean, we talked about their grandchildren, all of this. And then we went up to Capitol Hill and there were people in the hallway somewhere who had come in to kind of demonstrate, you know, they were saying, Winnie.
Winnie. Winnie. And she came out in the hall and the fist in the air, and it’s like all of a sudden it was almost a transformation from this lady grandmother into, you know, interpersonal interaction that I was having into the public persona, which was very different.
John Corcoran: 24:31
Fascinating. Yeah. You. So you. That’s an interesting first client to have for this business. Not too, too long later, you actually become a franchisee for Burger King like your parents had.
And I’m kind of fascinated by, you know, we have these different seasons in our life where, you know, I used to joke when I was at the White House, I mean, anyone will return your call. You can call literally anyone in the world, be like, yeah, you have to call me back. Yeah, call me back at the White House. And like, anyone will call you back, and then you leave, and then it takes some adjustment, right? You know, entrepreneurship sometimes knocks on a lot of doors.
So what was that like for you starting a Burger King franchise? Totally different world from the stuff, you know, negotiating with world leaders and hanging out with Nelson Mandela?
Shelby Scarbrough: 25:18
Well, I got married. I met my husband down the hall. He worked in the press office. And so we got married after the administration was over. And we were talking about ways to, you know, the political cycle.
It’s cyclical. Right. It’s it’s a.
John Corcoran: 25:35
Yeah, two.
Shelby Scarbrough: 25:36
Two years, four years, eight years, you know if you’re lucky. And we had just come off of this, and he’d worked for eight years in the White House. And so it was a very interesting time to say, what do we want to be when we grow up? And, you know, do we want to stay in that political realm? Well, having grown up with Burger King, there was an opportunity to franchise Northern Virginia.
And because there were no franchises there at the time. And so we just looked into it and I asked him if he was interested, and he’d never worked in a fast food restaurant at that point in his life. And I’d spent most of my youth in a fast food restaurant. I knew that I did not want to be the day-to -day frontline person, because I had had that experience and my business was taking off, no pun intended, because I was going to a lot of places. But he and I knew that if we were to do that, that he had to be the one who wanted to be the front line, day to day manager, operating partner, who could do the hiring and firing and do all that kind of stuff.
I knew even then I knew that wasn’t my forte or my strength. I was more of a visionary, and at the time, I didn’t know that, that I didn’t know that word. I wouldn’t have put it in those terms. But I’m a quick start and a visionary kind of person. And so I like to get in there and get things started and then have somebody else take it over from there.
And that’s what he did. He was a great manager. He had great management skills. And so he was the guy who was the frontline person. I would come in and help open the restaurants and get them started and work into them until we got management trained up and then moved to the next restaurant.
We built ten restaurants in a short period of time, and it was kind of overwhelming, but it was a great experience for us. In many ways. Our marriage did not last, but our partnership has prevailed, and I’m very grateful to have him as a business partner to this day, so many years later. And he still remains one of the most trusted people in my entire life. And I’m so grateful for the entire experience.
But it was a very different experience working on the front line of a Burger King than flying around with Nelson Mandela or the Pope or Lech Walesa of Poland? Or would it name your world leader?
John Corcoran: 27:44
So yeah, people are upset. Their fries are soggy, right? Like it doesn’t matter. Like, oh, I don’t care that you worked with Lech Walesa. Like I want my crispy fries.
Shelby Scarbrough: 27:52
So it gave me a great perspective on both sides of it. Right. I used to say from the Burger King to the Queen of England, it’s all the same to me. It’s all about really great customer service and focus on the client. And in the Burger King, the client is that person on the other side of the counter wanting hot French fries and a good hamburger, you know, and a clean environment and to eat it in.
So that’s it. It’s just delivery of that product or service and doing it with a smile and doing it with the best intent and the highest level of professionalism and having that attitude. So for me, it’s fundamentally the same, even though the work is different.
John Corcoran: 28:30
That’s probably a great segue into the book that you published in 2020, which was Civility Rules. You publish it at a time when I think a lot of people were talking about civility or a lack of civility that we had, you know, even 20 or 30 years ago when you and I were working in politics. What inspired the writing of the book?
Shelby Scarbrough: 28:56
I had been asked to write a chapter for a book called The Power of Civility, and it was about, they said, do you want to write about political civility or international civility? Well, I’d been in the international civility realm for a long time, and I thought, well, let me take a stab at political civility. And so I went around and interviewed all the people that I’d worked with and a lot of names you would know, you know, a lot of famous political people and media people, etc. many of them have passed on. Now. I’m so glad I got a chance to talk to them all about this.
And I wrote a kind of a long chapter for the book on political civility, which I realized after I was writing. I mean, this could be the topic is ripe for an entire book about the subject, about civility in general and the lesson from the political civility chapter was there really hasn’t been. And then it’s kind of an oxymoron. There’s no such thing as political civility. And as we go through each new political cycle, I think more and more people will.
John Corcoran: 29:50
Agree.
Shelby Scarbrough: 29:51
With that concept. But that doesn’t relieve us of the responsibility to try to attain a level of civility in life and in politics and in everything we do.
John Corcoran: 30:06
Yeah. Yeah.
Shelby Scarbrough: 30:07
As a member of society, I believe that’s a personal responsibility that we have.
John Corcoran: 30:11
Yeah. And I also think, tell me what you think of this. I feel like we go through these kinds of waves and patterns where civility may wane, and then it increases and it wanes. It kind of goes back and forth, and it might be personality driven. It might be who’s in office, you know.
I do agree that there’s less civility now than there was 30 or 40 years ago. But I don’t think that. And we’re recording this, I should say, in October of 2024. I don’t think that it will always be the way that it is now. At least I hope not.
Shelby Scarbrough: 30:43
Well, to your point, there’s interesting dynamics in the people who are running for office and the parties, I find them both to be equally uncivil in their approach and a lot of things. And that people could argue that with me. That’s fine. But I could pull out lots of examples where the flame throwing and the mudslinging and the tomatoes are equally ripe on both sides. And so that’s disappointing to me.
But I can’t change that. What I can change is what I bring to the game, and what I hope by writing the book Civility Rules was, which is creating a purposeful practice of civility. The subtitle of the book, it’s about what we bring to the game. Because I can’t make you civil. I can’t demand civility out of you, especially if I’m not civil.
So it starts with us. It starts with the individual and what we put out there as far as energy and an approach to everything. And so that’s my hope, is just by sort of explaining that or talking about my own philosophy on it, that maybe somebody else might be inspired by it and, and play along. You know, it’s not that I don’t believe in legislating civility. I think that gets right down into freedom of speech, which is a big core element of what I talk about in the book. This is the point of I believe civility is necessary to preserve freedom of speech, not to not squelch it.
But it’s a very fine line when we get into legislating behavior.
John Corcoran: 32:13
And yeah, that’s that. An interesting point because, you know, when you are on the floor of the Senate, you have very specific strict rules around civility and what you can say and what you can’t say. And then there’s also just kind of decorum. There’s customs, you know, which, you know, the last couple of years we’ve seen some people getting in trouble for violating those customs. Right. You know, yeah.
Shelby Scarbrough: 32:32
It rubs people the wrong way minimally and it causes other challenges societally when it’s really ratchet, when the rhetoric gets ratcheted up. Yeah.
John Corcoran: 32:44
Yeah. You also started the Global School of Entrepreneurship during Covid. What inspired that?
Shelby Scarbrough: 32:51
I was asked to be a part of a task force for the Entrepreneurs Organization, which we both belong to and loved so much. And they were looking into an idea of accredited programming for the learning because EO is a learning organization. So how do we get accredited learning for our members? Is that something that’s doable because traditional education, traditional academia, is out there. But, you know, even the programs that EO has with Harvard and all those things are not for credit.
They are executive education programs. So the task force met and we figured it out. And that’s the short story. There’s a longer story there, but we figured out how to accredit the learning, presented it to the board of OEO, which was great and it was nice. And then Covid hit the next day and the entire world shut down.
Oof! So it was at a logical time that everybody then began to focus on, you know, for members, they had to focus on delivering value to the members in a different way and helping members survive, you know. So the focus was not on that anymore. But we said, this is a moment in time that we’ve figured this out, and we broke the code on it, and if we let this go, it would be a waste. So do you mind if we take it and take it private, and we’ll come back to you to work with you to help, to help benefit the members.
But in the meantime, we’ve created a business that can be a new way to MBA. It’s a new paradigm for academia. And there’s just lots of facets to it. But the bottom line is we have an MBA for entrepreneurs as one of our main solid products. And then we also have programs where we can take people’s books.
I call it taking your book to class. We take entrepreneurs’ books and create a course accredited college master’s level business course out of it so that they can own their own intellectual property. You know, if you try to go to a college, you potentially lose control of your intellectual property. And that’s not a formula that works well in the entrepreneurial world. So we’re trying to empower entrepreneurs and at the same time give them opportunities for education that maybe they haven’t had because they got out of college and started their or they dropped out of college and started a business, or they always wanted an MBA but never could do it.
Well, we figured out how to get that done.
John Corcoran: 35:09
I know for me personally, EO has been so meaningful for my educational journey. I went to law school, not business school. I should have gone to business school, so I got the wrong degree. But, you know, going through the EO accelerator program, which the curriculum there is just largely based or primarily based on this book, Scaling Up by Verne Harnish, which is an excellent book. And, you know, and then you I know you and I have both been through the EMP program at MIT, which also is an amazing curriculum.
And I say that, you know, those programs have been like the MBA that I never had. And, you know, these days we need something that’s more practical. I look at my kids and my kids like, good luck to Netflix because my kids don’t even watch Netflix. They don’t want to watch a half an hour show or an hour or an hour and a half long movie. They want to watch very short little videos.
And so there’s a real shift that’s happening where people want to consume information in a different way than previous generations did.
Shelby Scarbrough: 36:04
Well, what we. Can do with the EMP program or the what’s known as the Bogue EMP program, Birthing of Giants, or Entrepreneurial Master’s Program and Accelerator. If you are a graduate of those, you are halfway to an MBA with us. We can give you 50% credit towards an MBA. So then the MBA program only takes one year and roughly half the money. So it’s a and the cost of our program is a lot less than, than most traditional MBA programs because we don’t have the brick and mortar, we don’t have the overhead.
The legacy of thousands of research professors and all of that stuff. We are very pragmatic. It’s about real world experience. And it’s a we call it the Oxford tutorial method, which is a group of people who get together and are facilitated in a conversation about the subject matter rather than lecture to rather than the Harvard lecture, you know, case study.
John Corcoran: 36:53
Yeah. You may read a case study.
Shelby Scarbrough: 36:54
As part of your homework. Yeah. But when you get into class, it’s about what you talk about and sharing your own experiences. Much like EO loves to share experiences, it’s about sharing your experiences with each other and learning from each other in a facilitated way. With a professor, that’s as much a part of your grade and your program and your graduation requirements as reading the case study.
John Corcoran: 37:16
I love these varying different winding paths that we all take. So you tackled working at the White House International summits, State Department, starting your own company, Burger King franchisee. Why not just start a new accredited university in the midst of a global pandemic. But I’d love to know for you. Like, what was that like?
Building? You still are building it, but what has it been like for you building an accredited university in the midst of a global pandemic, compared to all the things that you’ve done previously in your career?
Shelby Scarbrough: 37:45
In some strange way, the pandemic for many people may feel similarly that there was this strange lull that gave us some space. I mean, I’m not an advocate of a pandemic, believe me. But, you know, you look at the glass as half full and.
John Corcoran: 38:00
Yeah, much as.
Shelby Scarbrough: 38:01
Possible, the benefits of being sort of cloistered away was that you had a little bit more time to focus and drill down on things and get something launched, you know, and whereas whereas if you were busy doing going out and doing your things that you normally do without a pandemic, it might take a little longer. So we were able to get this up and stand it up in a short period of time and really work through a variety of business models with it. So in a way, it was a little bit of a luxury, but I don’t recommend it and I don’t want to repeat it.
Shelby Scarbrough: 38:33
But I just.
Shelby Scarbrough: 38:34
Tried to use it.
Shelby Scarbrough: 38:35
To advantage.
John Corcoran: 38:37
I love these stories. Shelby, thank you so much for your time here today. I want to wrap up with my final question, which is I’m a big fan of gratitude, and I’m a big, big fan of giving my guests the opportunity and the space to recognize, shout out, acknowledge people, especially peers or contemporaries that have been with you through your journey through your career. Anyone in particular you’d want to shout out and thank?
Shelby Scarbrough: 39:01
Oh my gosh, you know what’s so funny is when I think about that and I just updated my Civility Rules acknowledgements page, which was already four pages long.
John Corcoran: 39:10
Now it’s six pages long.
Shelby Scarbrough: 39:13
Yeah, now it’s six pages long. I’m a big believer in gratitude and acknowledgment to people. And so I had four pages. I mean some people put 2 or 3 names. I have four pages of names of people who helped me along the way in, in any number of circumstances. So for me, everything from Ronald Reagan to the people I mentioned earlier.
Obviously my family for sure. My partner in Burger King, Ben Jarrett, who is my ex-husband, and my current partner, David Nielsen, who we just talked to, Dave Bensky, my partner in the Global School of Entrepreneurship, and even and even Guy Fieri, of all people, which we’ve not talked about, but who’s been an interesting teacher to me and my brother.
John Corcoran: 39:52
My brother works with so Funny, Small World.
Shelby Scarbrough: 39:54
He does. Is that right? Yeah.
John Corcoran: 39:56
We’ll talk about it offline.
John Corcoran: 39:59
My brother works in reality TV, so that’s. Fun. That’s a small world.
Shelby Scarbrough: 40:01
Small world. Always. So. Yeah.
John Corcoran: 40:03
Another good Californian.
Shelby Scarbrough: 40:05
Yes, yes.
Shelby Scarbrough: 40:08
So we end up. You know, I’m just grateful to everybody. And I know that sounds a little trite and a little too general, but there’s just I have a group that we call the witches who are all former or current EO members, and we call ourselves the witches because we make magic happen. And when we get together, it’s really fun. We just, you know, brainstorm with each other and help each other sort through all of our stuff.
So it’s like a mini forum. Is Maureen Birdsall and Lori Gallagher and Jennifer Bunkers and a woman named Joanna Blau. So all these people, you know, probably most of them, and we just, you know, I’m a big believer in getting out there and just connecting with as many people as possible because you never know and not not looking for the outcome, not looking for the transaction, but just being open to the relationship.
John Corcoran: 40:54
Yeah. For sure. Shelby, this has been such a pleasure. Where can people go to learn more about you and the Global School of Entrepreneurship and your various different books, and connect with you?
Shelby Scarbrough: 41:02
They can go to shelbyjoyscarbrough.com, and if they spell it wrong, they’ll still get there.
John Corcoran: 41:06
So it should get all the different spellings. Good.
Shelby Scarbrough: 41:08
Yeah different spellings and stuff. So yeah that would be the simplest way.
John Corcoran: 41:11
Shelby thanks so much.
Shelby Scarbrough: 41:13
Thank you.
Outro: 41:16
Thanks for listening to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast. We’ll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.