James Keyes’ career has included serving as CEO of two Fortune 500 companies; Blockbuster Inc. and 7-Eleven, but he starting off working to be an astronaut.  Hear how, plus find out what Einstein called “intelligence having fun”, learn about what CEO really stands for, why 7-Eleven and Blockbuster were really part of the same business, what REALLY happened to Blockbuster (and why you may not have seen the last of it), the root of all commerce, the best way to prioritize your time, dealing with change and fear, and the key to true freedom, and how James narrowly avoided the mafia…we think.

Mentioned in this episode:

Learn more at SouthwesternConsulting.com/Coaching/Students

Southwestern Student Coaching

Today's guest is James Keyes, a longtime business

leader, currently serving as the chairman of Key Development LLC.

His career has included serving as CEO of two Fortune 500

companies, Blockbuster, Inc and 7-11. His new book, Education

is Freedom, The Future is in Your Hands, highlights his

passion for lifelong learning, and is out now. James, thanks

for joining us.

Sure. Yeah, you better call me Jim, though Adam.

I put James on the book because I wanted to be more formal. But

nobody will know who it is if youcall me James.

Oh no, okay.

The nice part about Adam, at least nobody calls you

like, Ad.

Yeah, you can't reduce it any further? Yeah, you

know, I'm always curious what someone thought was going to be

their wife path in their early days, and then what some of the

twists and turns were that caused it to be quite different

than maybe what they expected. So, what path were you thinking

you were on? And then what changed?

That's a really good question. I literally grew

up in circumstances where I didn't even know what options

were out there. Business to me was the factory My dad worked

at, and I didn't want any part of that. So business was kind of

dark and dirty and hard, or the alternative was, it was typing

class. I remember in high school we had typing class, no frame of

reference whatsoever. But I was inspired by the space program at

the time. As a kid, I grew up watching, you know, the Apollo

missions and Buzz Aldrin walk on the moon, and Charlie Duke and

guys like that. And so I thought, okay, these guys came

from nothing, and they become astronauts. So maybe that's a

path for me. I want to be an astronaut, and I can do really

cool things. So that was my first dream to be an astronaut.

Set out to do that fell a little bit short of the astronaut day,

at least so far in my life. You never know, though.

Yeah, like, what did that even look like?

Well, Adam, that would imply I even knew the path

to be an astronaut. All I knew is that to be an astronaut, I

better be smart. And so literally, I said, Well, if you

really want to be an astronaut, you better study because they

have to be smart. I dove into learning, and I dove into

school, and I loved science, you know, trying to learn as much as

I could. One of my failures, I said, I'm going to I'm going to

learn how to be a rocket scientist, and that will be my

path to be an astronaut. And a guy named Robert Goddard, like

the father of modern rocketry, grew up in this town, not too

far from where I grew up, so I was kind of inspired by him, and

I said, I'm gonna work on my own rocket. So I took an old

flashlight, and I put some fins on it, a nose cone on it, at the

body of the flashlight, and I took a baggie and I put gas in

it. I thought, well, you know, if I put gas in it, and if I

control the flow of gas, I maybe make it lot, pretty silly. I was

like, seven years old, or eight years old, something like that.

So I set this thing off, almost blew myself up. Didn't manage to

get off the ground, but it did create quite a little fire. So I

snuffed out the fire, and then left, came back and discovered I

had nearly burned down half the neighborhood fire took off. So

here's a kid trying to learn, trying to be a rocket scientist,

and I was dubbed a bad kid in the neighborhood because I

almost burned the place down.

But you know, it's a good early lesson that failure

is going to be a part of the journey.

It's a part of the journey. I have a quote by

Nelson Mandela that I use all the time. I never lose. I win or

I learn.

Yeah, the town survived. No one died in that

explosion.

Exactly. And I learned I was not cut out to be

a rocket scientist.

Maybe not. But you found a way to reconnect with

some of that passion, right? 40 years as a pilot?

I am a commercially rated pilot. I don't fly

commercial airlines. I fly a citation, which is, I'm at 40 to

45,000 feet above most of the commercial airlines.

Wow.

Without a need for a co pilot.

That's pretty cool.

Yeah, it's, it's beyond cool.

You know, you've had such a storied career

between your time as a CEO, you know, at 711, Blockbuster, and

we'll get into a lot of that. But I thought something that

really drew me was actually all of your, I think it almost goes

beyond to say hobbies, but I mean, you composed and CO wrote

a song that was performed. So composing, flying, sculpting,

painting. You know, to me that that's reflected of someone who

is innately curious.

Yeah, it's curiosity, creativity.

Interestingly, Einstein called Creativity intelligence, having

fun. And it's so true. I mean, think about it, playing music is

actually a form of mathematics. People think about it that way,

but if you look at a score, it is mathematically correct in

terms of beats and notes and structure and the way it comes

together. It's almost a subliminal use of mathematics

when you learn how to play an instrument, but it's also fun.

And so it's kind of it makes learning fun and curiosity is is

that innate thing that we all have as children. I mean, how

many kids do you know that don't run around asking why, and

they're just curious about everything because their minds

are just developing and they just can't get enough want to

learn more and more and more. And if we can learn as adults

also to keep asking why there's just so much more richness that

we can enjoy, why just look at art? Why not practice it? And

then the next time you go to a museum, after you had a canvas

and played around with some paint and mixing colors, the

next time you go to a museum, you look at a great masterpiece,

it's so much more meaningful when you've actually done it

yourself.

On the business side of things, taking on the

role of president and CEO of a tremendously large organization,

I can only imagine, comes with a certain amount of stress and

pressure. What were some of the things that you felt were most

preparational and taking on this role? What were some of the key

things or events that you felt equipped to you to lead so many

people?

Well I'll share a story with you. I use this story

sparingly, because honestly, it sounds a little flaky. Shortly

after being named CEO, I ended up with a dream. Now you see why

I don't tell the story very often, but it was an incredibly

powerful dream, and I was probably having that natural

hesitation that we all have, maybe a little imposter

syndrome, whatever it is that says, Oh my gosh, I'm the dog

that caught the car. Now I worked my whole career to try to

be a CEO. Now I am 1am. I able to do this? Am I capable of

doing this? And in this dream, I was told I was going to get a

gift, and I was given tasks, and I was sent off to do these

tasks, and I came back from every task, then I woke up. Darn

it. I woke up too early. I missed I didn't get my gift, and

I write down three words change, confidence and clarity. I said,

What the heck does that mean? The next morning, I'm thinking

about it. And this, I didn't get my gift, and then I started

talking about it. Virtually everybody that I shared that

story with said, that is your gift. How do you think you got

there? You were able to take the worst kinds of change from the

time you were a little kid and turn that into a positive so

you've recognized that change equals opportunity. That is the

very acronym CEO. Change equals opportunity. That's the role of

a CEO, and you're the best person we know at being able to

deal with change good or bad, and you've got this weird sense

of confidence that you can do anything. I realize now that all

it is is a matter of learning. I learn do anything. And then they

said the third thing is, you've got this weird sense of clarity

that you break complex things into really simple terms, that

you can then communicate it out clearly, change confidence and

clarity. That was the gift of those three things that I didn't

even know I had, I think anyone can use to find their own

personal or professional success.

No, that's fabulous. Yeah, I love that. You

know, you came into Blockbuster during a tough time. I wanted to

know, and maybe Blockbuster's not the right place to ask this

question. But where did you hit a wall?

Well I've hit a lot of walls in my career. People

forget that 711 was bankrupt and back back in 1991 shortly after

I joined the company, and I thought, Man, what a bad career

decision. I went from a major oil company to 711 thinking that

it was going to be a great career trajectory, and I find

them now bankrupt. This is one of those things that change

equals opportunity. The company had 10 years of same store sales

declines. Was really on a difficult trajectory. It was

growing still, but it was having trouble keeping up with

competitors, and it ultimately had to file for bankruptcy, but

that gave it the opportunity to reinvent itself. We were able to

look at the success of our licensed operations around the

world, places like Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, bring those

learnings back to the United States. So we were able to

reinvent the company and come out of bankruptcy as successful

entity. For me personally, it ended up being a great

opportunity, because I thought I was going to lose my job like

everybody else, but we came out of bankruptcy and I ended up

with a promotion and was put in charge of strategic planning for

the new enterprise. Led to then a career trajectory that gave me

an opportunity, ultimately to be CEO of 711 so we took adversity,

crisis and then turned it into the next 10 years, 15 years of

significant success, which when we sold the company in the year

2005 gave me the opportunity then to take on the challenge of

blockbuster so I went into blockbuster eyes. Wide open. I

knew it was going to be a challenge. Didn't know the kind

of challenge we would face. Yeah, because no one thinks

about blockbuster 711. Is the same thing, except they're two

iconic brands, right? Think about the nature of

blockbuster's business. It wasn't renting DVDs. That wasn't

their business. Their business was convenient access to media

entertainment. It's a convenience business. Not unlike

711 they made the pivot from VHS tapes, which is where the

industry started, to DVDs. DVDs were more convenient access to

media entertainment. So they made that pivot successfully.

The digital transition was coming. Clearly it was coming. I

wanted to take the company there. The very first act as CEO

was to buy a streaming video company called blockbuster on

demand. So we had a massive competitive advantage versus

Netflix, because Netflix had DVDs by mail, very little else.

They had streaming, but they had very old movies. Movie link had

new releases, which is was 80% of the blockbuster business. So

we had a much better offering, arguably a streaming platform,

DVDs by mail stores. In case you didn't want the one you got by

mail, you could exchange it. We had kiosks. So we had something

called total access, which is any way you want your media

entertainment. We have it pretty compelling competitive

advantage, right? So you say, what happened? Well, we also had

a billion dollars debt that occurred from an IPO in other

words, a public offering that Viacom once owned blockbuster,

and they spun it out and created a new entity, a public company

called blockbuster in 2004 put on a billion dollars of debt,

third of which was due in 2009 now, if you remember what

happened in 2008 something called Lehman Brothers occurred.

Financial market collapsed around Lehman Brothers failure

and others, and we had a refinancing that we had to get

done. It's like being in a commercial airline or at 40,000

feet, and all of a sudden the air gets sucked out. You have a

decompression. That's what happened to Blockbuster. We had

to put the aircraft in a bit of a dive, if you will, preserve

cash and get to a safe altitude to be able to then climb back

up. So we took it through a restructuring and had a

successful sale of the entity to dish networks. So in spite of

popular belief, Blockbuster didn't liquidate. They didn't go

away. They were sold the Dish Network, who ultimately had a

different strategy, or 100% streaming and 100% streaming via

mobility. They were a bit early and their strategy and

ultimately closed the stores down. They still own the brand.

You never know it may come back one day.

Yeah, wow. So you know, this is something I've

thought about over the last just few days, thinking about this

interview, is a reluctance of leaders to be honest with their

CEO. But I'm kind of curious how you dealt with maybe some of

those challenges, or how you generated a culture and the

leadership teams that you formed where you got reality.

There's an expression for that technical

expression. I'll give you the technical business term. It's

called a grinf***. Yes, sir, yes, sir, that's a good idea,

sir, that. But it's true. It occurs, and it's just so

frustrating. You know that? Look, the root cause of that is

fear. People are afraid they're going to lose their job. Fear is

the biggest killer of careers, of companies, even societies.

They're coming to get you to take something from you. They're

gonna they got something that you don't have. Isn't that

unfair? Fear is the lowest common denominator. It works.

It's a motivating tool. There's only two ways to motivate

people. You motivate them through hope and through

inspiration, or you scare. So take that same reaction now. Put

yourself in a corporate environment, somebody does

something that you think I may lose my job, I may fail, or I

don't think that's a good idea, but I don't want to tell him

it's either fight and be disruptive in the work

environment. We all seen it somebody being obnoxious in a

boardroom and demonstrating non productive behavior, just being

argumentative for no reason, or it's the corporate version of

flight, which is inertia. I do nothing. Yes, both are bad. Both

can be cured, but only through knowledge. Because what happens

when you're afraid? If you're afraid of the dark and you turn

on the light, you realize, oh, that's silly. I didn't have

anything to be afraid of. Well, knowledge is light.

Communications is a way to spread the light. So in a time

of crisis, communications from leadership are critically

important, because that's the light that takes away fear

throughout the organization.

Sure. Is there anything you did in particular

with your leaders to make them feel they could approach you

about challenges?

Change, confidence, clarity. Well, the clarity of

communications is both inbound and outbound. So listening is

critically, critically important. As humans, we are

often guilty of trying to formulate our response before

fully understanding what someone's trying to tell us,

trying to hear and truly understand what that person's

trying to tell me, and then trying to be very clear in my

communications also so that I'm not triggering that fear

response. Because once I triggered that, once I've made

them afraid, I've lost I won't get truth. Yeah, what I'm trying

to communicate in my book is that leadership is about change,

constant, inevitable, lifelong change. It's constantly changing

as a leader, being able to adapt to different circumstances,

different times, different styles, because you have

different people with different reactions, and that constant

adaptation to change as a leader, I think, is what's

critically important. Leadership's about change and

evolution. It changes the root of all commerce. You think about

it, someone needed something, and someone satisfied that need

and got paid for that service. Commerce begins, right? It's the

heart of all commerce. And then that person got a little bit

complacent, and somebody else said, Hey, I'm going to change

things and give you another way to satisfy and then change

occurs, right again, and someone profits from it, and someone

else, perhaps doesn't. And so change is at the heart of all

commerce. And yet when change occurs, as humans, we naturally

resist. We get worried, because it creates that fear thing.

There's only two responses to change, and either respond

favorably and see it as opportunity, or you can start

blaming feeling sorry for yourself, put your head down. So

it's not the change that matters. Change is good. Change

good or bad. Change and be positive. It's response to

change that separates winners from losers.

You know, I think one other tactical thing I

wanted to ask before we do, like, kind of a quick lightning

round of questions...

I thought this was a lightning round?

Yeah, the whole thing, the whole thing. The

question I had was about time, where to invest it, when there's

so many areas, places, people asking for it, anything that

you'd share on that that's been a good process or system. For

you about how you funnel your time and leadership.

For me, all about where am I going to either learn

the most or contribute the most, one of those two things? So

somebody comes to me with a board seat and maybe a company I

know nothing about, or an industry I know nothing about,

but if they're if it's an opportunity to really learn a

lot, because there are really good people on that board, and

it's a dynamic company that I'm going to learn from, learn a

whole new industry, I may go do it. And that's my that's my

criteria. Is it, am I going to learn from it, or is it

something, man, I can really help these folks get to the next

level. And I'd like to use my many, many years of experience

to help them, because I believe they're on the right track, but

I can really contribute to this entity. And then there's

probably a fun factor too. Is this going to be fun?

Yeah, that's fair. And, you know, looking at all

the hobbies that you've developed, you feel that to some

degree, having some of these things that are more artistic or

creative in nature were supportive of your your

business.

Absolutely. I am always amazed at how people try

to specialize so early in their career. We've got kids now

trying to be an engineer when they're, you know, in the sixth

grade, it's great somebody thinks they know what they want

to do, I know what? Yeah, maybe, maybe I'm the exception, but I

don't think most of us are mature enough, even throughout

high school, to truly know what things will excite us for the

rest of our life. So I encourage more breadth of knowledge and

understanding, and I've become a bit of a junkie about the more I

learn, the more I can do. So I'm just passionate about learning

more stuff, because I find it's it's interesting. I can go

anywhere in the world now and mix in different cultures very

comfortably, because I've learned about those cultures and

I've learned about the people in those cultures, it makes it far

more interesting to travel when you know what you're dealing

with. It's not just taking pictures of recognizable

buildings and monuments and things. It's really, really

mixing with people and getting to know them. And when you're

doing that, if you can talk about flying airplanes, that's

one of their passions, or or new. Is it? It just makes it

even a richer experience. And I think anyone can do that like it

takes that curiosity.

I love it. So just for some quick responses to a

few of these questions. You know, we looked at what you just

said, culture places, what just right now? What's, what's the

culture country that you're most fascinated in and want to travel

If you were to say, where would you go if you had a

to?

preference? I'd say, Well, tell me what you're going to let me

do. If I'm going for food, I'd probably go to France and parent

because the restaurants are fabulous. If I'm going for

relaxation and killer beaches, I'd probably go to Thailand. I

love the Thai culture, and I love the beaches there and the

food and the people are so sweet. If I wanted to just have

fun, I'd probably go rent a car and blast around the streets of

southern the southern coast of France, the Amalfi Coast in

Italy. I want to go to a show and see theater. I'd probably go

to London. There's so much richness out there. Anyway,

these are, this is the lightning route. I gotta stop.

Yeah. Because you've composed, I just wanted

to ask you this question, what are you listening to right now?

I listen to everything, and this is the

problem. We talked about, time. There's not enough time in my

life to listen to everything I want to listen to. Last evening,

I was former chairman of the Dallas symphony. Last evening, I

listened to Mozart, cello and violin. Today, I'm going to

speak at a school, and I'll be introduced to to Snoop Dogg's

Drop it while it's hot. That's that's a bit of a range there.

Yeah. What's a piece of advice that you're

really glad that you ignored. So thinking back your whole

business career, was there a time where someone tried to give

you some advice and you willfully ignored it to a better

benefit?

Yeah, two things. I was working at McDonald's, and I

had two interesting career opportunities. One was a guy, I

don't know what I don't know Gui was, but he was this kind of

buggy looking guy, and he used to call me Jimmy. Jimmy got a

deal for you. Come to work for the boss. Come work for the man

would take care of you, Jimmy, be an interesting life. And this

is up in the Northeast, and I kind of knew what he wanted me

to do. And he's like, Hey, Jimmy, you're going to make a

lot of money. Jimmy, I'm really glad I didn't go down that path.

Guy was right out of the Sopranos. You know, I could have

been in one of those bad movies. So that was one. Thank you. But

no, I don't think, I don't think I need to meet the boss at the

same time, the same time I was offered an opportunity to go to

hamburger use. So here's two alternatives, Hamburger U and

become a store manager within the McDonald's system.

McDonald's was just growing at the time, or that. Don't know

what the job was, but I'm turning both of those down, and

instead, getting a degree gave me far more options than I would

have ever had at hamburger youth. While it may, my life may

not be as colorful as it would have been, working for whoever

that was, I think it was a good decision.

Absolutely. You know, in a lot of conversations

with a variety of people who've had a variety of different

successes in their career. There's something that I always

want to help our listeners define for who we're

interviewing, that's what success actually means to you,

and how you know when you've achieved it?

Very simply, one word, freedom.

Okay.

It's why the book is called education is freedom.

It's all about freedom. People think it's about money. Money's

just tool. Give you freedom. But even without money, knowledge is

what gives you freedom. You can have the freedom to you've seen

this show billion dollar undercover billionaire. Yeah,

yeah. They drop these people on the street with like, 100 bucks

and see if they can become rich. Again. Interestingly, it's

really not about money. Everybody thinks, oh, that's

about making money. No, these people have the knowledge Yes,

to then go out and give themselves a lifestyle that

gives them freedom.

Yeah. And you know, coming back to this, which

is your book, oftentimes, when you're offering a book, some of

the advice people tend to give you is, don't write it for

everyone. Write it with someone in mind. Who are you writing

for?

I wrote the book for the 18 to 20 year old. Me

that that was a kid that had no idea that he could afford to do

it beyond the immediate community and experience of

family members who didn't have the opportunity to go to college

or live the lifestyle that I live. And so I wrote it kind of

for me, it was like what I would have told my 18 to 20 year old

self, that, hey, tremendous opportunity, and the secret to

your success is. Is in books, and by the way, I'm going to

give you a roadmap to even make it simpler, because here's a

pathway, what to learn, how to learn, or why to learn. If you

do these things, you will be successful. So that that was my

target. Now what I've found, though, Adam, I'm shocked at the

demographic breath, because while I targeted that audience,

the biggest response has been from 25 to 40 that are early in

their career, saying, I need to get to that next level. How do I

do it? And they're finding that same roadmap applies to them.

Even older people can see that lifelong learning really can

make their life richer, even if they're retired.

This probably syncs right up for someone when

they read the book. But the last question I'd ask would be, if

you could summarize the advice you would give that 21 year old

version of yourself knowing everything you know now, what

would that be?

Yeah, to use knowledge to eliminate fear.

Wow, yeah, that's really nice. That's a good

concise way to see it.

It's what it's all about, because fear is such a

killer of individuals, careers, corporations, of society, and

the antidote to fear truly is knowledge.

Jim, thanks for sharing some of this knowledge

with us, for folks who want to kind of follow your journey in

continued exploration of things, and then also your book. Where

can they go to learn more about Jim?

Well I've got a website, James. I use James for

the website. It's very formal. You can tell I'm a really formal

guy. So Right? JamesWKeyes.com, and that's my website. And then

at JKeyes, first initial, last name at J keyes, author. I'm on

Tiktok and Instagram and Facebook and all those and

Twitter, all those locations, and I'm trying to put out

content that will take little pieces of the book and hopefully

help to change some lives. That's my goal in life now, is

to help everybody realize their full potential, because it's

really not hard. If I can do it seriously, anybody can can use

these same things to eliminate fear and to unlock opportunity.

Wonderful. Yeah, I really appreciate the words of

wisdom, and thanks for sharing with our audience today.

Happy to join you. This has been fun.