The Curious Capitalist – Tom Quinn (Nuovo Pasta)

 Welcome to the latest installment of The Curious Capitalist, brought to you by the Board of Conscious Capitalism in Connecticut. The Curious Capitalist is a series of podcasts where we take the opportunity to not only speak to board members from the conscious capitalism, Connecticut. But also to business owners, startups, and entrepreneurs.

The Curious Capitalist is available on all of the world’s biggest podcast platforms, including Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, and Spotify. Never miss an episode again and subscribe today wherever you get your podcast. Welcome along to the latest installment of The Curious Capitalist. Now, I’m excited about this one.

I’ve gotta be honest. I am joined today with Tom Quinn from Novo Pasta. Now Tom is the Executive Vice President and the Chief Operating Officer of Novo Pasta Productions, as well as being a published author with Cape View Press. I’m excited to find out more about Tom and the work he’s doing. Tom, welcome to The Curious Capitalist.

Thanks for having me. It’s great to.

It’s a real pleasure. The pleasure is all mine, as they say. So common. Then Tom, tell me a little bit about you and how you got to where you are today.

No problem. I started out in the food business scrubbing shelves. So I came out of uh, fair Food University with a degree in economics and my father pulled some apparently very short strings and got me a job scrubbing shelves with a food brokerage, which basically is an operation that operates as a sales force.

But people, companies don’t. So I started there. Then I started managing that group. Then I took on another job and managed that group, and it was really the best way, although I didn’t feel that way in my twenties, to come up through the system and be able to learn all the pieces and really have hands-on management, and that really led me to.

Where I am today and the opportunities that I’ve been afforded very gratefully, and it also led me to the book Delivering Greatness. I captured a lot of those learnings in that book because it’s been a 35 year business journey and a 57 year life journey, and the ability to capture. All those learnings and try and help folks along the way.

You know, I’ve stepped in enough bear traps in my life. I’m drinking a cup of tea right now. It’s coming out my ankles. That’s how you can tell I’ve been in a lot of bear traps. So I figure if people can learn, you know, from my mistakes. It’s always best to learn if you’re learning from somebody. Learn from somebody else’s mistakes, it’s a lot less painful.

And that’s really what the genesis of this book was. I’ve been mentoring a lot of young folks over the last couple decades, and I basically captured a lot of what I’ve shared. The people I work with here at Nuovo, when they read the book, said, uh, we saw the live version. There’s really not anything else here, , and that’s really what it is.

You know, because I wanted to share these things. That’s what brought all this into exist.

How many years did you, no. I guess the question is, did you always plan on writing a book? So whilst you were going through these various avenues of life, did you always plan in the back of your mind to write a book?

I did not. I’ve been writing the book for a little over 10 years. It’s not cause I’m a slow writer, , but it’s cause I actually had three chords of the book written within the first, I would say two years. Honestly. This was actually the combination of two books. Cause I had written the first book and I had done so well on my dresser drawer.

The logical thing was to write a second . So I started writing the second one. And then like most people, the reason most people, I talk about this frequently, the reason most people aren’t successful at something is they just don’t know. Nobody wakes up in the morning and says they’re gonna be mediocre today.

That’s not a thing. People wake up and they wanna do the right thing, they wanna be successful, they just don’t know how. And President Company included, I had this book written. I had two actually written, and I had no idea how to get to the finish line, so I managed to find a Sherpa, somebody who had in the publishing business, who had worked for Simon and Schuster and for Amazon, and I was on his own.

And he really guided me through the process. And I tell folks all the time, When you can’t find your way doing it yourself, there’s no, you know, extra points for that. The points are forgetting over the finish line. So the key is really to find somebody who’s done it, who knows it, and let them guide you through the fog.

And that’s what brought this book to, to fruition. So from

start to finish, how many years do you think in the making has this book taken?

Well, it was 10 years of writing. And then about seven months from the meeting, the guy to being published. Wow. That’s, so we, we met the first time in November of last year, and by July 2nd I was available.

On most online

platforms, that’s phenomenal. Absolutely amazing. And we will direct our listeners how to get hold of this book that has spent more time in a draw than out on the public domain. We will definitely do that towards the end of this podcast. So back to the business side of things, tell me a little bit about the, the growth, I guess, of the business over the years and what has been, I guess, some of the biggest challenges that you

faced.

It’s really, I. To listen to the sidewalk. That food brokerage that I started with scrubbing shelves. By the time I was done with my eight year tenure there I had, was running a 52 million business with just Metro New York alone. Wow. Uh, worth two and two and a half million dollars annually to the company in commission.

That’s a lot of jobs for a 30 year old to be in charge of. Yep. However, I was living in Connecticut and commuting to New Jersey every day, so it was 80 miles in the morning, 80 miles. Which when you’re a young man is fine, but when we started having kids, it was a problem. Mm-hmm. and my wife, after a while, had just had enough of that.

I don’t blame her and said, you have two choices. You can find a new job or find a new family. I’m very difficult to live with, so I decided it was easier to find new employment than it was to find a new family, which actually worked out fine because. The brokerage was very kind. They said, you’ll always have a home here if it doesn’t work out.

Cause I found another job with rich products out of Buffalo, New York. And I said, that’s great. I really appreciate that. Five weeks later, the corporation, the brokerage went chapter seven, full liquidation. 5,000 people out of work nationally. No severance, no cobra, no nothing. And everybody was calling me up to find out what I knew cuz they thought I had known something and, and exited.

I said, I knew my wife was gonna leave me if I didn’t try another job is what I. and it really brings to the forefront that life is a game of inches, not feet. And people think there’s a lot of wiggle room and sometimes there isn’t. And you have to listen to the signs. You have to look. Look at the sidewalk.

Yeah, you equate it to the sidewalk at Disney, but the sidewalk doesn’t move the same speed as the ride in life. You know how you get on the sidewalk on that ride? It goes along same speed as the ride you get on and off. Life isn’t like that. Life speeds up and slows down. And if you get off too soon, you missed opportunities.

And Wow. . Yeah, and goodness me, we grew it, what I call the old fashioned. Nobody walked in with a big check. Everybody did their jobs and we grew it organically and did the work every day. And again, the, the founder and the owner of the company has a great vision and great guidance, and our job is to make that vision reality.

So what an

incredible journey. Absolutely incredible. So, What do you wish you had known? I mean, I love the idea of like, it’s almost like sliding doors, isn’t it? You know, these opportunities present themselves to you and you, you take a certain path and you leads to other places, and what a perfect example you’ve just given.

But what do you wish you’d known before you started out cleaning those shelves on your career path?

I guess the only thing I wish I had known is that I shouldn’t have been ashamed of what I was doing, and I was, and I’m embarrassed to. But for the couple years, three or four years in my twenties, I wasn’t as upfront with the people I went to school with as what I was doing, and I should have been, and I should have understood the road I was traveling.

The problem is, but the opportunity, I guess, is the number of people I came outta school with started middle management and a lot didn’t survive because they didn’t have that foundation to be able to build on that and build it somewhere. When I was 24, I was the smartest guy in the room. Just ask me. I, I could have told you that.

I, I am much less smart today as I’ve realized all the things you don’t know, but I hear people say, I wish I had done this different, wish I had done that different. I don’t wish I had done anything different. Honestly, every experience, good and bad builds on the next one, and you can’t make good decision.

without having the, what we’ll call bad or negative experiences. Absolutely, absolutely. The only reason I commuted back and forth 80 miles each way for six of those years is I lived in New Jersey for two years, 10 minutes from my office, and my wife was miserable. Mm-hmm. , and I realized that that wasn’t the way to have a family.

Mm-hmm. . So I was very happy to drive back and. All those distances for all those hours a day and a week and, and month and a year. Because I knew what the alternative was. If I hadn’t had that experience, I wouldn’t have been able to justify in my head knowing what the outcome would’ve been. Otherwise,

you know what they say?

Happy wife, happy life, and it could never have been truer. So tell me what your average day looks like. Now, you know, you’ve got the big job, you’re the vp, the coo. What does the average day look like for Tom?

I laugh a little because the title is often way cooler than the gig. My job really is from about eight 20 every morning till about five 15 or five 30.

I have a stream of people in this office basically bringing their problems, looking for guidance. It’s an interesting thing because I have a really, really smart group of people I’m surrounded by. I’m very, very fortunate, and they solve 98% of the problems, which means everybody brings me their two. And so, and what I get is an entire day of impossible problems that don’t have real answers.

So it, it’s an interesting dynamic at this point. Up until about four years ago, I did all those functions here. So whether it was overseeing production or finance or what they now call supply chain, we just bought stuff in those days, or a qa, quality assurance or what have you. I did all those jobs. So it’s another example of having done them.

It’s now a lot easier and a lot more legitimate to manage.

It certainly sounds like how many people are employed at that

location? We have over 250 corporately and about 210 of the location I’m in.

Wow. Us. Wow. Us. So coaches

don’t, onto my office for the record, there’s not 200 people inside my office. I was gonna say that about about nine or 10 that come in here on a regular basis and they departments.

Gotcha. That’ll be a much longer deli. It

would, and that 2% would suddenly hurt a lot more. For sure. Tell me a little bit then about how you first heard about Conscious Capitalism.

Actually, I was approached by Glen and a friend of Glen’s, and they had heard me talk and they had seen what I had written and they thought there was a natural, and they started hearing the story.

You know, again, the beauty of working with the guy who started the company is you’re able to affect. When I left rich products, I was downsized. You can’t see cuz this is audio, but I was downsized enough. You have to like, you know, fire me three or four times seeing my belt buckle. Listen,

it wasn’t, I feel you.

I feel you. American food has dumb me, has dumb me. It, I totally identify. Well if you’re a

pasta guy too, in all honesty, this guy just, this body doesn’t just happen, you know, you have to work at it. You gotta put your hard head out and go to work. But I had a lot of opportunities coming outta rich products and this was a very small company at the time, but I saw.

I saw a guy who had a great moral compass, wanted to do the right things, wanted to build a good ethical business, and wanted to make a great product. And those are all the things that kind of fit with me, and I think I how I got connected with the curious capitalist. You know, if you think about how that thought process that goes into that methodology, there’s a lot of parallels to what I live every day, and I think that.

Glennon it and the folks saw a connection there. A, a kinship, if you will.

Absolutely. Yeah. A real synergy. So we talking conscious capitalism often about, you know, a higher purpose within the business. Do you have a definable higher purpose with the company that you can sort of put your finger on and say, yeah, you know, we’re really striving towards this, this, and this?

Yes.

We strive to be a great, provide a great product. First of all, if you can’t provide a great, you know, great tasting, high quality product, and the rest of it really doesn’t. Equal to that though is being a great employer and you know, working with our employees and helping them grow. It’s been very interesting.

There was 35 employees here when I started. As I said, now we’re over 250, 19 years later. I have in my desk dress drawer, a manila folder with all the artwork that any person’s kit has ever drawn for me. .

You soft touch Tom. I love

it. I, yeah, love it. Don’t tell we, we won’t tell other people that, cause it’ll ruin my street cred.

But I, that’s important, you know? It really is. And when you. Understand their lives. I have told people for three decades, if I find out that you’ve missed a school concert or a parent-teacher night for work, I will dock you long before your spouse gets to me. And it’s not cause I’m a nice person, it’s not cause I’m the Red Cross.

I’m neither of those things to be sure. But it’s because I’ve realized over the years that if you have those other parts of your life straight and square, then you’ll be focused here when I need you. And I tell people, believe me, yeah, I will get my time from you. I always. .

So absolutely like it goes back to what you were saying earlier, you know about, you know, making life decisions based along your family.

You know, your companies are gonna get the very best out of you if you’ve got a happy family life and home life, and it just breeds through your employees. What are the things with conscious capitalism we talk a great deal about, obviously is leadership and culture within that business. And that’s a perfect example of.

Really empowering and, and looking after your people to get the very best from them and the best for the company, and hopefully you know the planet as well. At the same time. I guess one

of

the phrases I use a lot, and if you were ask anybody here they could tell you without even prompting is, I’m, first of all, I’m an Eagle Scout.

Not a lot of kids in Boy Scouts making about 1% of all the kids that ever joined scouting make. So not a lot of people do it. And I had a scout master, God rest his soul, and one of his most used phrases was Leave the campsite better than when you found it. And that’s both literally and figuratively. You know, we’d walk into a campsite and say, listen, I know you didn’t put that candy wrapper there, but now you’re burdened by the knowledge that Saras still picking up.

And I talk to the folks here, and again, there’s a lot of younger folks that I deal with mainly being old. There’s a lot more younger folks every year, so the numbers are in their favor, but I speak quite frequent. About leaving the campsite better than when you found it. Everything we do in business, everything we do in life needs to point towards leaving the campsite better than when you found it.

You know, when we get to the end of the, the work journey and then the end of the journey journey for people to look back and say, well, you know what? This place was a little better cuz Quinn was here. That’s not a terrible way to be remembered. Then you’ve made a real impact. Love that. So I think lot love that parallels there as well.

Love that Tom. Absolutely love that. Funny enough, I had a very similar experience in my school life about the impact that I have on the world, and uh, I live a very similar line to you. I have to be honest. If you could snap your fingers and make one cultural change within your company, what would it be and why?

I’d probably want to be able to communicate more directly with everybody. I think that’s one of the few. Challenges? Well, it’s probably a lot of challenges. One of the bigger challenges when you get more people in your work family, you know, it’s easy to bring 30 people together and be able to speak directly firsthand.

When you get to 250, you’re relying on people within your organization to translate the same message, and I think that’s something that there, there were a perfect world. You’d be able to get 250 people in a room easily. Keep in mind, the building I’m in runs 24. So there’s three ships a day, so people aren’t around the same time.

It’s not like we’re a one shift operation. You get shut down for two hours and bring everybody in. If you’ve had a room that day, which we don’t, it’s three different shifts across a number of different days. So you really rely on people within the system to be able to get that message across.

I was gonna say, how do you manage that?

You, you feed it out, I guess, through your management team and. So

on teams on the ground, we do some direct communication. We feed out through the management team. This past summer when the economy turned so challenging, we actually had, the owner did, the founder had a series of meetings with all the employees.

It took like, I don’t know, 10 meetings to, to put all together and to meet with everybody directly, which is a logistical challenge, but was necessary given the times, and I’m glad we were able to do it, but it’s not something you do on a regular basis because the scheduling component is pretty significant.

The Curious Capitalist Podcast on behalf of the Conscious Capitalism Connecticut chapter is created and produced by Red Rock Branding. If you are enjoying this episode, please subscribe to and share this podcast today. I can. Well imagine there’s a lot of people to get through, particularly during Worldwide Pandemic, you know, hats off.

So, back to the book, Tom. Mm-hmm. some of the highlights. Pick out a couple of highlights, I guess. You know, you talk about. Reading through somebody’s life experience so that potentially you don’t have to fall into the same traps, you know, and, and. I don’t wanna say mistakes because everything’s a learning opportunity.

Of course. A learning moment as one of my previous guests once said. But pull out a couple of key ones that that really sort of stand out for you. Is that of wisdom, I guess, that you would like to impart onto somebody?

Sure. Well, first of all, I’d like to say that I wrote this book for people like me, so every chapter is three to four pages.

And I took all the key learnings and I separated them in bold and italics often from the text. So somebody actually made you read this thing. You could scan through and make it sound like you actually read it by pulling out the key points. The other reason I made the chapter so short is it’s terrible when you sit there at night in bed and you wanna finish the chapter.

You wanna have that sense of accomplishment and you start flipping ahead and see how many pages there is. Yes. That’s like 10 or 15 pages. You get really downtrod. You don’t wanna do it. Yeah. Here you can read a couple chapters and call it a day. Good Beauty. And I think that’s important. You know, people learn through stories.

So if I were to pick out a couple nuggets, so one of them was what I just said, leave the campsite when you found, it’s one of my core tenants. Also, I put in my five parts of management. The one I’ll put out there though is that management’s not a spectator sport. You need to be involved. And I talk about that and I think that’s really the key if you go with that approach.

I’ve always believed in being the under. And you have to earn this chair every day. If you don’t earn the chair every day, then you’re not doing anybody any favors. Now, the fact is, we’re all humans. You’re not gonna earn it every day, but you have to acknowledge that and be honest with yourself and then earn it twice tomorrow.

And that’s okay. You gotta go into the day to earn the chair. Again, it’s not a gift. It’s not a, they don’t bestow it upon you. Anybody that thinks that you might as well pack up your stuff. Your time is short and you’re not, you’re

essentially taking it for granted, I guess.

Exactly. Yeah. A lot of people do.

They get to a certain level. When I was a young man, I saw these vice presidents and I said, wow, it would be great when I get to be a vice president. I know all these things, and I was waiting for that time life. Big book of knowledge to arrive in my doorstep. And I don’t know, that’s kinda like the, you know, great Plains of World War ii, that whole series.

So I was waiting for the great big book of knowledge to come and I don’t know if they didn’t get my address right or whatever, , they never really arrived, . And then I realized that all the people that I looked up to a, as vice presidents just sounded very confident and used their experience to guess better.

And they had a higher success ratio because they had experienced the guests better, but they were still guessing, call whatever you wanna do. You know, we can call it estimating, we can call it projecting. We can put all these business words to it. They were guessing, but they had a high batting average. So people listened to their guesses, and it worked out.

and I talk about that too, because you see the end result of, of people’s careers. You say, wow, I want to be that. Well, it’s a long road to. And it’s all those things. So I talk about that. I talk about partnerships. I talk about how having the people around you is so critical. The partnership with my wife, I’ll be married 35 years in March.

Guy I lost 10 bucks American on that deal. I thought she would’ve beaten me with a, the stick long before then. , a jury would never have convicted her just for the record. But, you know, having the, having those people around you and being grateful, the fifth management tenant to say thank you, it doesn’t cost you a.

And it’s one of the things that’s most overlooked by, by managers sometimes. Agree. Mistake. I agree. Yeah. Managers and leaders. Yeah. Management is a title that people, you know, assign to you. Mm-hmm. Leadership is people willing to follow you. A leader walking down the street with nobody willing to follow is just a guy walking down.

Okay, beautifully. You really have to earn. You have to earn the respect. Nobody can give that to you. They can give you authority, but you have to earn respect. And

that’s pretty critical. I couldn’t put it any better myself. That’s a beautiful example of why culture and leadership, you know, particularly when we think about conscious capitalism and how people are choosing to run their businesses, how important it is to get that buy-in, how it to earn that seat on a daily basis, to have people wanting to follow you, you know, it’s, it’s a beautiful example and analogy of, of what it’s all about.

Tom, that’s, that’s beautifully put. So a little bit about you. Tell me a little bit about what you do other than obviously desperately try and keep your wife happy and away from New Jersey. What, what do you like to do to unwind and relax when you’re not working and earning your seat?

Well, despite that noble goal, I do a number of things.

I ride a motorcycle. I’ve been riding since I was 18 years old. Woo. I have progressed up to a Harley Davidson. Ooh. Which you go through about four or five different layers of bikes before you can afford a Harley Davidson. This is the

management progression, isn’t it? This is like in line with your career.

Yes. You get to vp, you get your Harley. Okay, got it. Yes, exactly.

Just check in. Exactly. . And when I pull up in front of the buildings, I’ll ride to work periodically in a leather jacket and, and wrap around glasses. You’re like, who? You? I’m like, I’m the vice president. . So it, it makes an impact. We have two great kids.

We have a 26 year old son who is a, uh, sous. For the Hotel DuPont down in Wilmington, Delaware, which is a four star hotel. Wow. Uh, he got that job outta cooking school and we actually had him here recently for the holidays and he made a great meal for us. And people said, well, that’s a great meal. I said, that’s a very expensive meal.

That’s $160,000 meal. I hope you enjoyed it. Our daughter is 23, she’s in marine education. She’s down in Key Largo, Florida these days, and she basically takes kids, school kids that come, come to her place and she’ll take them out to the, uh, protected reef out in the middle of the. And teaches ’em about proper stewardship of the ocean, the animals that are out there, how to care for it, which is really her jam.

What a great gig. And she loves that part. So we do that. Short of that, I’ve really enjoyed getting out and chatting with folks about these learnings and what’s been published. Yeah, it’s been a lot of fun. I actually been asked to, somewhere in the early next year, go to a couple different universities and speak to students there.

And to be honest with you, this has never been. Making a nickel on this. I would like to, I like to break even. I’d be, you know, break Eve is a noble goal. Even making a couple buckets is okay, but the ability to get these lessons out as far as I’m concerned, fulfills the promise I made to the people that taught me.

I had some great mentors. Yeah. And they were very gracious with their time and their learnings and their. And my deal with them was always, when the time came to it that I would share. I would add whatever I could add to it. Yep. And, and share those again. So, okay. As far as I’m concerned, this makes us square.

You

are passing it on. I love that. When it comes to sort of, I guess, the promotion of the book and, you know, being asked to speak in certain places, do, do you have to do like a, I don’t want it to sound too grand, but like a little talk to push the book or you’ve been invited to speak at a number of different places or?

Yeah, I’ve been, I’ve been, I’ve been asked to, I’ve been very gracious. People have asked me to go different places. Cape View Press is actually an independent publishing. I say it’s independent because I am Cape View Press. We, we have a location. My wife and I bought a, a retirement home up in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

Beautiful part of the world. So yeah, it’s about three and a half hours from where we live here. So we go up every other weekend and every time I bring a box up, it stays there. And when this process was in, in its formative stages, I had to come up with a name for the publishing company. So I looked out my window and I said, what do I have?

I seem to have a Cape view. That seems good. We’ll go. Beautiful. Love it. The upside of that is you have a lot of control over what happens. The downside of that is you’re the control of what happens. Yeah. So there’s no promotion except for whatever you promote. There’s no push. Whatever you do. We had a great launch in September of, of this year, and we had about 60 people show up to the local library.

you

awesome. . Can I tell you what? The folks here on their own, you have water bottles? Yep. And they, they rewrap all the water bottles and it had a picture of the book and it had leave the campsite better than when you found it on water bottles.

So that was a takeaway that people had be beautiful. It’s really humbling when you see all the folks that give of themselves just to help you. For sure. For sure. And then I wanna get back from it. They just do it just to. I would say it leaves me speechless. But you probably figured out already. That’s not a thing.

Nope. But it certainly is extremely, extremely humbling. So, so with

Cape View, what’s, what’s the plan? You’re gonna write a, are you gonna write more or, I’m still writing. Are you gonna have, are you gonna publish other people’s work? I mean, is it gonna grow, is this gonna be a retirement

project? Probably is.

Not to publish other people’s work, but I believe you have to listen to the sidewalk. So who’s should say what’ll come up along the way, but I am still. There’s still more observations to be had. There’s still more things to learn. There’s still more mistakes to be made. You would think I would’ve capped out my mistakes in the first two, but not so much.

Nope. There’s there’s only new one. Make new ones. Make new ones. Exactly. New and exciting mistakes. Don’t use the same one twice, but I am still writing, so I, I expect that if this goes the way I’m really, uh, hoping it’s gonna continue to go, then somewhere down the road, there’ll be another book. That would be amazing.

So if, forget were the reason just to keep sharing the.

I love that. It’s essentially you are, uh, a modern day teacher. Without a classroom, you’re imparting your knowledge to help people you know, improve and get the very best out of their lives and the opportunities that are, they’re gonna be presented with.

And for them to come to the party with the right attitude, to be able to absorb that lesson when it happens. I like that. I really like that a lot. So, last couple of questions before I let you get on with your very busy date. Tell me if you could. A fictitious dinner party with anybody and you could invite any guest from History Alive or Dead, gimme a couple of people that you would invite to your dinner party.

I’m assuming your son would cook, and what questions might you

ask? Well, that’s a tough one. Uh, that’s right up there with the job interview. And what kind of tree would you be if you were a tree ? Um, I was never able to answer that question properly, by the way, , I, I found giving, giving my heightened body frame.

I was more of a shrub. I guess some of the interesting people I would have at a dinner party like that would be people that have had. Challenging situations that come through on the other side, and then, you know, then, then there’s some selfish ones. You know, I think F D R would be an interesting person to talk to, only because when you’re coming out of the depression and going into a world war, I mean, that’s a thing, you know, it really is, you know, and some of are stocked things, but they’re really interesting things.

You know, Abraham Lincoln, for example, the whole place was breaking up on his watch and it wasn’t that far from when it all got. You know, you’re really talking about maybe 90 years. So it wasn’t a foregone conclusion that this deal, America was gonna be America. And he’s watched this whole thing break apart in his watch.

You’re talking about dealing with a 2% of problems. That’s a really a 2% of problems day and every day was like that. It was pretty heavy duty, , fish, um, you know, that kind of stuff. I’d also love to have Stephen King there. Yeah, because I got a chance to see him speak. At a national book festival in Washington DC a couple years ago pre covid, and just a very interesting story and just a, seems like a really down to earth guy.

So I think that would be interesting from a literary perspective. And then probably Eric Clapton, maybe. I’m quite a music file, so Uhhuh , that’s always an interesting thing. I’m not envious of a lot of things. I am envious of. I was in.

We’ll end you a Brit. We’ll end you a Brit for your dinner party. You can have it.

There you go. He spent more time over the side. Anyway, .

Exactly. Thanks. I was in radio for five years. Listen, because I loved music. That was one of the great lessons I had. Cause I became station manager at the end of my tenure. Wow. Awesome. And to be able to manage 90 of your peers and move them forward and organize ’em, not being able to pay.

That’s a lesson that you take with you through your entire life.

It’s one that I, I’ve gotta say, I’ve had the same experience 25 years of radio, and I always describe being a station manager as the chief cat herder. Yes. And, and you know what really stood out to me as something you said earlier on and it, and it really did take me back to my radio days, was the importance of, thank you.

Particularly when you are dealing with a semi re-employed and a semi volunteer workforce that thank you that I would always. Find the time to do, to sit down with someone and say, do you know what, that, that and that, that you did this week are fabulous. Thank you so much. Yeah. You know, for your contribution goes a whole long way.

It truly does. I think sometimes we get so caught up in, in business and running to stay still that we forget to just sit down and say, do you know what? That was great. Thanks so much. One of the

things I did when I first took over station manager is I called, we were on air 22 hours a day. Yeah. And I called every shift for the first two.

So I would catnap for the first two weeks, it was college radio and I, I would call every shift. I was listening and then eventually I became like a ghost. They always thought I was listening. They never knew when I’d be around. So once you create that, it was actually a perfect career path too. Cause I was told multiple times I had to face, it was perfect for radio.

Oh, absolutely. I realized later that was not a compliment.

I listen, I’ve been using that line for the best part of 25 years, and that is the reason why. Now you have my dulcet tones on the curious capitalist and definitely not the face. Face For radio .

There’s been some great key learnings. I’ve been very, very fortunate and you have to be aware of your surroundings and listen.

One of the things I think this book really taught me was that everybody has a. And we’re all in such a rush to go nowhere that we don’t think we have 10 minutes to hear the story. And every story, you learn something from, sometimes it’s a cautionary tale. Sometimes it’s, I’m never gonna do that. That’s a terrible idea.

But you always learn something and I think that really opened my eyes. And you see more opportunities that way. Tom,

you’re an inspirational fella. You’ve managed to hang on to your wife and you’ve got your plans. I. With your Cape View press, it’s been an absolute privilege and a pleasure today. How can people get their MITs?

How can they get their hands on this book of life learnings? Cause I gotta be honest, I’m you, you had me at the short chapters. I mean, I’m game for this book straightaway because I am that person who lies in bed. Just gonna get to the end of the chapter. Where can I get it? How can I get hold

of your book?

You can get it at most online retailers, Amazon and Barnes and Noble, both if you happen to be in the Connecticut. The Fairfield University bookstore, which was my alma mater, is actually stocking it on shelf. Beautiful. We’re working against some other places, but again, almost every online retailer I’ve found, I found it on target.com to my own surprise, so, but Amazon Barnes, no.

You can probably get within a couple days.

Beautiful. I will also put it in the show notes for this show, so wherever you are listening right now, do take a look at the show notes. I will put a link in there so that you can get your hands on the teachings of Tom Quinn. Sounds like a Victorian a Dickens novel, doesn’t he?

I love it. Tom, it’s been such a privileged chatting to you today. I wish you all the luck in the world and I too will go forth and leave the campsite cleaner and tidier and much nicer than when I

found it. Thanks for the time, Claire. I really appreciate the time with you.

Thank you for taking the time to listen to this episode of The Curious Capitalist.

If you would like to find out more about Conscious Capitalism or if you would like to join the local chapter, visit the website, Connecticut dot conscious capitalism.org. The Curious Capitalist is available on all podcast platforms, including Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, and Spotify. If you have enjoyed listening to this episode, subscribe to and share this podcast today.

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