Host Vaughan Dugan sits down with former NCAA football coach, Marc Nudelberg, to discuss how coaching football has tremendous value when starting a new business.
Host Vaughan Dugan sits down with former NCAA football coach, Marc Nudelberg, to discuss how coaching football has tremendous value when starting a new business.
Intro (00:00):
Welcome to another episode of the pull up your sock show with your host and serial entrepreneur Von. Again, your source for everything you need to know about bootstrapping your startup vis is pull up your socks. Oh fuck. I've got an intro here. The best part is Oscar can't even hear this. No
Marc Nudelberg (00:27):
sitting in the room has no idea what's happening, right? Two do with talking to each other into a mic.
Vaughan Dugan (00:32):
So Mark Nudelburg, you're my number one guy, my first guy.
Marc Nudelberg (00:35):
I am blessed to be the first guest on the pull up your socks podcast.
Vaughan Dugan (00:40):
Wow, it's good to have it. So let's, we got a lot going on this weekend. I'm gonna make this short, but you are my first guest on this podcast. We've got a guest in the room, has no fucking clue what we're talking about right now, which makes this fun. We've got an audience of one Mark. What's going on this weekend? Talk to us
Marc Nudelberg (00:54):
Boca bowl man. Vocable action happening at FAU stadium this weekend. Three-thirty. ABC national coverage for the TV and excited man. It's a great hyperlocal event. Now that FAU is involved and I'm excited to get everybody out there and have a good time.
Vaughan Dugan (01:10):
All right. You seem to know a little bit about the sport of football. Give us a little background on who you are. How do you know so much about the footy ball?
Marc Nudelberg (01:17):
Long story short, I started college football coaching when I was 18 when I got into college at Florida state. I was a student assistant coach there for four years until I graduated and then got hired full time by Jimbo Fisher, which then launched my coaching career that went to five different schools all between the power five group of five and FCS and I did that for 10 years as a special teams coordinator and then bounced out and now I am in business development at ESPN West Palm.
Vaughan Dugan (01:44):
All right, cool. I always wonder, I, I meet people often and Mark's one of those people who you just know like they have a job right now, but he's not a job guy. He's an entrepreneur. You can tell he's got that spirit, he's got that fire. We've met several times. There was tequila involved. I think once or twice. Definitely every time maybe. Yeah, it was good tequila. Speaking of advertising, I think we were drinking Casa Migos for episode at the time. Correct. So we got to drop that in there just so we can, both of us can go after them for some, some, some inventory. All right, cool. So talking about what are your plans or you just moved back to South Florida recently?
Marc Nudelberg (02:18):
Just move back. Yeah, eight months ago. Glad to be back. Kind of been getting up and down between day County to West Palm. I live in West Palm right now. My girlfriend just moved back from San Fran. She lives in Lauderdale, so I spend a lot of time between the two counties and you know what the plans are. I don't really know. I don't have a plan. I think I spent a long time planning that I was going to be a head coach and do this whole thing in another career. Now that I'm back, I think you're right. I think I have an entrepreneurial bug. It probably comes from my dad's Steve noodle Berg who shout out to him the confessions of a serial salesman. One of the best dude. But yeah, I think, you know, there's definitely other things on the horizon for me. How soon or when, I don't know.
Marc Nudelberg (02:56):
But you know, building the rapport of having sales, credibility and credibility within the business community here in South Florida, this is where I want to live. This is where I want to be. So what my niche will be as I, as I continue to grow, I don't know, but I'm sure it'll have something to do with sales. So you drop your dad's name right? So, so after Steve Newburgh is a rock, he, I was fortunate enough to be on his podcast. He's a phenomenal human being. He's got more energy than anybody I know from 18 to 80 he's a, he's a good guy. He's a good guy to be around. It's infectious energy from that guy. Talked to you about like DNA man is like to think like your dad has a big hand in. I think there are, I think there's two things when it comes to like who you are as a person, you know, whether it be 10 20 or 30 years old.
Marc Nudelberg (03:43):
I think you have certain genetic traits. I think there are certain things that come in your DNA, but then those things have to be, have to be nourished or cultured or like there has to be some kind of conditioning to those things in order to get you to a point. Like I was pretty positive. I was not going to be in sales, I wasn't going to be in the business world. Like that just wasn't going to be my thing. I was going to be a head football coach. Like I fell in love with coaching. I was good at it. We were really successful on special teams everywhere I was. But you know, 10 years later you're kind of looking at what you're going to do for the next 10 years and that didn't really seem like what I wanted to do anymore. So now here I am in exactly in the vein that I think my dad always wanted me to be in.
Marc Nudelberg (04:27):
Right. So it's, I think it's genetics and conditioning. Like you have to at least get the, the inputs for it to really flourish and being raised by him. You know, he split from my mom when I, when I was five and so from five to 18 every minute with him was with him and him only pretty much so like, and it became clear to me as a little kid that like, and he'll tell you this like I was in his life, he wasn't in mine. So like that meant going along with him as he was trying to build a business and build a career and he was selling it. You were selling advertising at eight [inaudible]. It was learning how to get along real quick, you know? So I think that kind of, you know, that background and growing up in that environment, you just learned to, you know, sink or swim so you better swim.
Marc Nudelberg (05:14):
I was swiping quarters off bars when I was a kid. That was my upbringing and that was my entrepreneurial start. Lemonade stands and swiping quarters off the bars to play video games. That's back when they took quarters, by the way. Right. Talking about like you're, you know, you're obviously been a, you're a coach for quite some time. How does that set you up in business then? What kind of a discipline, discipline and process? Discipline and process. Like for me, when I would take over a new special teams, when I would come into a new school as a new coach, new group of kids, they don't know you, they don't know what you do. It was all about having a specific process of what we were going to teach, how we were going to teach it with the vision of the outcome for everybody to understand.
Marc Nudelberg (05:56):
So that process, you know, you just take it from the football field or you take it from the organizational structure of a football organization and you move it into a business organization and the business world, it's a little bit more difficult because in football everything is a finite time, 60 minute game, right. You know what you're trying to do in the first quarter, second quarter, third quarter, fourth quarter. You know what you're trying to do in August to get ready for the season. You know what you're trying to do on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday to prepare for a game on Saturday. You know what you do on Sunday, everything is very specific and scheduled. That doesn't really exist in the real world. Like you choose, you know, like I can choose to prospect new, new, new, new partners or I can choose to not. Right? And there's no specific time of when you're supposed to do that.
Marc Nudelberg (06:42):
So I think finding your own process and structure of how to make yourself successful in the corporate world is you have to have that, you know? And so understanding that you need a process, but then finding what that process is and tweaking it and making it your own and making it work for you. I think transitions from one to the other. And then leadership, you know, like nobody is going to follow you if you can't communicate with them, relate to them. So for me, being in sales and business development, I immediately have to try to find a way to communicate with somebody and relate to somebody to build a relationship with them so they can trust Akilah. Right, exactly. That's such a game changer in the corporate world, but you can intoxicate people as you're trying to get them to make a decision. I think that's how you ended up like hosting like four or five months.
Vaughan Dugan (07:29):
Yes. This is working out in your favor. I think I screwed up here. I'm the one with podcasting equipment, his sales rep 100% over the last year. So yeah.
Marc Nudelberg (07:40):
You know, I think just, you know, communicating and you know, I used to build relationships with the kids and build trust with them that what I was teaching them was the right thing and proving to them that it was the right thing and having, you know, getting us to have success as a group. So it's the same thing in, in sales.
Vaughan Dugan (07:54):
You, it's funny, we were sitting at the bar Kapow we were having a really cool conversation. I enjoyed getting to know you a little bit and, and you made a reference, which is really neat because I'm always trying to make a connection with everyone I talked to and how I can relate to them. Just like you said, like what's the common bond, the common thread, how can I talk to this person and do I really like them? So if I really liked them, you want to get to know them. You want to talk about them. You talked about being a coach and I'm a business owner. I own restaurants, I own bars, right? Cheers. Where I, you can't see this. We're not videoing this yet. So Oscar cheers. And we go, thank you. This is Dan owes tequila today. We're drinking right now. So Dan owes a little shout out there. Delicious. Delicious. So a lot of people come up to me like, Aw man, you've got it made. You've got the life. How great is this? But they don't see all the work that I do outside of being the face of the bar. You talk to me about all the plane that went into being a coach. So you know, yeah. You only see the game for a couple hours on a Saturday, but how much time did you spend planning for that game?
Marc Nudelberg (08:51):
All day. Every day to me. Yeah, exactly. At the bar. Yeah, exactly. Like everybody, everybody looks at you like, Oh, you're the Kapow guy. Yeah. You own the coolest restaurants in, you know, West Palm and two locations. West Palm beach in Boca Raton and myosin apart. Shameless plug. Yeah, but so like they see you on Saturday and like, Oh man, you guys return that kickoff for a touchdown and yeah, that was awesome. So cool. But like they don't see that it took me from August 1st until September 1st every day, breaking down every single person on our team and how they move and what they do and do they have the ability to fit when I'm going to ask them to do then if they have the ability, are they willing? Now I've got to put them in the practice reps to see, okay, I'm asking them to do something, will they do it for me?
Marc Nudelberg (09:41):
And then saying, okay, now we're getting to games. Here's our opponent, let me watch everything that they do to make sure that what we want to do actually is going to work against them, right? Because I might want to do that. But if what they do really doesn't fit what I'm trying to do, then I gotta adjust my job as a coach to make sure I'm putting the players in the best position to be successful. So you're talking about all day Sunday you go from breaking down what you just did in the previous game, watching it, making the corrections, moving onto your opponent, watching what they do, seeing what their tendencies are, seeing if what you do really works against them if not trying to make adjustments. And then doing that for not only just one phase of the game, but you've got kickoff, you've got kickoff return, you've got punt, you've got Palm return, you've got field goal, you've got field goal block.
Marc Nudelberg (10:26):
If it's six phases I heard was like front of the house, back of the house, bartenders, my marketing team. Exactly. So like you have all of these moving pieces that you have to make that are all functioning at the same time. So you know, it's, it's, it's, it was a lot of work and it was great, but you had no control over your destiny. Like we were really, really great on special teams that all the places that I was, but not all of those teams were great. Weren't you a special teams coach? Yeah. Okay, cool. All right. So like, you know, if you don't win, you get fired and you might not have any control over whether or not you're winning or losing. And so, you know, packing up your stuff after 18 months or 12 months or nine months, however long you've been on the job and having to go find another one. And it was grueling.
Vaughan Dugan (11:13):
So we were just talking, you know, I'm an FIU guy. You're now here in the community. You're specifically working on the book or tumble FAU and the bowl game. It's exciting for the local community. We're all pretty much excited as owls to see them there. Lane Kiffin he's gone. The lane train, the lane train has
Marc Nudelberg (11:29):
took off to Oxford, Mississippi. That's
Vaughan Dugan (11:31):
right. So knowing that knowing he's gone, it brings up like, you know, kind of what you've mentioned, like what does it like when like the guy that's been like running the show for for so long, technically they give him a lot of credit for the success of the program. Putting a lot of that, that structure and attention on the program and he just, he just leaves and I get it. That's the nature of business. You pack, you leave you bigger, better
Marc Nudelberg (11:54):
deal. What does that do to the rest of the, the, the people, the team around you that you, that you built trust in or they build trust in you and how does that work? So it's interesting because in college you only get the kids for four years anyway. So it's interesting that like the freshmen who signed on to play with lane as a very different feeling than the senior who signed on the play with lane and played his whole career, the seniors kind of like whatever do good for you, lane, you're going to get yours at Ole miss. And we had our time here and we were the best. I'm sure they would prefer him finish the ballgame with them, but that's not the nature of the business. But that freshman that freshmen is going, Oh, wait a minute, what if this new head coach that comes in doesn't necessarily like me?
Marc Nudelberg (12:35):
Or what if I don't fit his scheme right? Or all of a sudden I chose to go to school here for four years. This is putting my entire future at chance now. And the NCAA isn't thinking about that. You know, they're there, they're aren't. They've gotten better about letting kids out to transfer and do things, but it needs to change. The business of college football has far surpassed the legislation of the NCAA. So we have to find a way to make it match because you know, and even as you as an assistant coach, like there's no guarantee that that head coach is taking you. Exactly. All of a sudden he's got a bad budget. All of a sudden he's got a bigger budget. He can hire anybody in the country. He wants it Ole miss. So maybe that tight ends coach or maybe that offensive line coach at FAU who was great for that budget and that school, he might not fit at all.
Marc Nudelberg (13:21):
Miss for you now. So like a guy that you were loyal to that you took a job with might not even be hiring you at his new job. So it's a, it's a very, very, it's a lot of stress. I couldn't do that. That's one of the reasons I like being an entrepreneur. Even if times are really shitty, even if I don't know if my next paycheck is going to come through, which oftentimes it doesn't. We talked about that earlier too, but I don't know what it would be like to work underneath somebody who really was the one that was in charge of my future. Despite the job that you're doing, the best thing for that program. But if he packs up and leaves and it doesn't take you with him or just decides that, you know what, I got a friend that got let go and I really need to give him a job and she wants to do the same thing as you.
Marc Nudelberg (14:02):
What happened to me happened to me at the university of Cincinnati, so I was working for Tommy Tuberville. I worked for him for two years. We were one of the best special teams in the country. I was a young kid. I was 27 years old. I was a special teams coordinator at the university of Cincinnati. I thought I had lit the world on fire like I was on track to be the youngest, a coach. I was going to be like, you know the next cliff Kingsbury I was gonna be this young kid that was going to be a head coach in the NCAA. And after a year, after the second year I was there, he calls me on the phone, he doesn't even do it in person. He calls him on the phone and just says, Hey look, you did a great job but we're going to go in a different direction.
Marc Nudelberg (14:37):
And he didn't tell me why, but I figured out why through the process of who got hired and everything like that. But it was because, you know, he knew somebody that had been in the business longer than I had and he was closer to him than me and he wanted to give him a job and I happened to be in that job that he wanted to give him. And so I was out. And that's the nature of what happens. Yeah. Fuck the good old boy club, huh dude. The, and then when they, when they tell it like, so I requested a sit down meeting with him cause I was like, I need to know what, why, you know, like I'm a young coach. Like what did I do wrong? How did that, how did exactly it go? So I called him and said, Hey coach, you know, like, are you in town?
Marc Nudelberg (15:14):
Can I sit down with you? He said, yeah, I'm in the office. Great. Can I go? I go in there, I sit down with him and I say coaching, I really appreciate the opportunity here and I'm sorry that's not going to work out for us. But you know, I'm hoping that I have a long career and I want to take this opportunity to really know what happened here so that I can, you know, get better and do better. And he was like, Oh noodle, you're great. He's like, you did a great job here. He's like, this is just part of the business. Fuck.
Marc Nudelberg (15:40):
Like you did nothing wrong but you got fired. Go find a new job. Wow. There's nothing worse than like, here's your trophy. You did a fantastic job, but it's just not how this works now that would kill me. It does kill me and I signed up for night or I guess at that point I was already in it so I signed up for like another five or six years after that. Okay, and what was the breaking point for you? You're like, enough's enough. You know, my dream is no longer to be a head coach and you know, w what? I don't think it was that my dream is no longer to be a head coach. I looked at it as like, look at all the things I've been through in the previous 10 years of my life. Am I willing to do that for another 10 years?
Marc Nudelberg (16:21):
I know where it's gotten me. I know how successful I've been. Love it. Am I willing to do that again for just the chance to be a head coach? Not even a guarantee. Like just maybe the opportunity happens that I become a head coach. Maybe it doesn't. Am I going to be okay doing what? Doing what I've done for 10 years for another 10 and not have it happen. So was it, you just didn't, you didn't, you decided at that point you're not going to sign up again, meaning like you're not going to, no, no, no. The contract, I'm just done to be totally transparent. I was working for a head coach that I believed was awful, that had no idea what he was doing. I was a special teams coordinator and recruiting coordinator and doing everything that I could to keep that program afloat and we couldn't overcome him.
Marc Nudelberg (17:06):
Got it. Two years in a row, we had three and eight seasons and I'm not good at math actually. That's not good. No. And, and I, you know, you, you kinda, you kind of pointed out that like I have a slight entrepreneurial bug, so the more disgruntled I got, Oh sure. The worst, the relationship got to the point where he looked at me and is like, if you can't change, I don't think we continue to do this. And I was like, wow, I don't think I can change. So I kinda got myself fired at that point. But you know, I, you know, I was done like tired of, and to be very fair, like I had interviewed at Miami of Ohio in Oxford, Ohio, which I couldn't believe I was going to end up moving there. And central Michigan, which is in Mount pleasant, Michigan and sounds cold army, which
Vaughan Dugan (17:51):
army, which is in West point, which is cold and in the middle and end like you're all live on an army base and there and I didn't get those jobs. God, you know, thank God for that because I would have taken them and I would have kept going and kept chasing the next job and me not getting those jobs and being forced to decision either go back to Lafayette or try something new. It was like a no brainer. It's crazy. Like as an entrepreneur you're hearing all these parallels of like what it's like to go even for me in business. So really quick to draw a parallel to your issue with the coach. That was pretty shitty. Three and eight. I just want to bring that up again twice. That's less. That's less than 500 so I had started a pizza company many years ago and that's how a lot of people down here know me.
Vaughan Dugan (18:36):
I got, I kinda cut my teeth, if you will, with pizza fusion. Organic pizza concept grew to about 50 units. We had to go out and raise a bunch of capital. The group that gave us the money at the bottom of the nights, it was like, well, you know, you guys need little more gray hair. What do you think about putting some management in there? I was young enough, I was dumb enough, but I was also willing to see my baby cross the finish line to go, you know what? It's okay. I'm not in this for the ego. I'm not in this for the title. I don't really care. I care more about my kid than I do right. Title right. Again, famous last words. As an entrepreneur, I've learned my lesson. I've gotten my MBA and, and just by being around all this, just by osmosis, at one point I think about a year and a half into this whole thing, there's a CEO running the company and it wasn't me.
Vaughan Dugan (19:19):
I was baby in the back. I was sitting in the back office twiddling my thumbs playing around on my space and Facebook and Foursquare and whatever I had to do to pass the time. And the CEO came in and was like, look, you know, there's, there's room for one of us here. There's only one CEO and I'm going to let you know right now who it's going to be. It's not going to be you. That's right. So what do you want to do? I was like, well you said it, I'm leaving. Stick around. This is my gig. So it's interesting. And so all of this said and done, like you've obviously already ESPN right now. You're kicking ass. You're, you're, you're, you're having fun. You've made a ton of connections. You know, you kinda told me that you're a big, big reason for you wanna do us is to shake hands, kiss babies, get to know a lot of people in the community again so that you can establish those contacts.
Vaughan Dugan (20:06):
It's all about who you know in any business. Building relationships. Like I have an unbelievable network in the coaching world just because I built genuine relationships. I worked really hard. I mean, you're a good guy and weird. I don't know that I'm necessarily a good guy. I just build good relationships and work really hard. So, but do you know what though? Like I, I believe it's being a good guy. It doesn't mean you have to be a pushover, you just have to be a good person, right? I talk often, I say to people, you just, there's no bad business with good people. It may not be a profitable business. It may not result in, in lining your pockets with money, but like as long as the person, it has integrity and you can trust them and you guys have an open, transparent conversation, there's no bad business that way. It's really interesting to me that
Marc Nudelberg (20:48):
like Gary V's pushing this super hardcore right now, but like this happiness thing, you know what's good for him. He wrote, he re faces, you know what I mean? Changes the message and changes the content. And like I'm of course on the text platform just because I want to know what people are doing and how they're doing it so that I can see it. Right. So, but like he's texting me these like motivations of like, dude, just be happy, you know? And it's really a thing. Like I look back on my 10 years of coaching and a lot of it made me happy. A lot of it made me unhappy and now that I'm out of it, I'm able to look back and look at what I'm doing now. And I'm not saying my job is perfectly, there's plenty of things that I don't like about what I do, but I'm in control of my life for the first time ever, which is like a mind blowing concept for me. Like I can choose to stay in this job or I can choose to leave this job. And what I'm doing right now will 100% correlate to another job or another thing. So if this ever is, feels like it's not the right thing, I can choose to do something else. So it's funny like this whole,
Vaughan Dugan (21:57):
Hey, this is my first episode ever, so thank you for being here. I'll pull up your socks. Thing came up as a joke. What they were talking about people like, you know, bootstrapping your business. And so one day someone, I don't know if it was here, if it was at Kapow, if it was like in another conversation and someone was asking me like how do I do this? How do I like, dude, just fucking pull up your socks bro. Pull up your sleeves, get to work, roll up your sleeves. I don't wear sleeves, we're in Florida, I have sleeves, I'm tattooed from head to toe. But it was just, it's interesting. So, so going back to to that whole thing with Gary V a really quick and what you just said, you're going to be a sound bite because what you just said, like I am now in control of my own shit.
Vaughan Dugan (22:36):
Like I'm in charge, I choose the best fucking feeling in the world for me 100% that's why I go to work every day. So when I go home and I cry, I have a bad day and I, you know, my wife's like, that's cool. You could be working for somebody else though. I'm like, good point honey. One of my socks going back to where it put me in coach, you choose to do it, you know? And like people ask like, you know, why do you work? Like why do you do this and why do you do that? Or like how do you do that? Like I just do it because I want to do it. Hello. How long have you been following Gary V? For a long time. So my wife for the first time I played Garvey for my wife. She was like, Oh, this fucking guy.
Vaughan Dugan (23:11):
His voice. He's so annoying and who wants to work 400 hours a day and it's, his message has changed in the past year either that, you know, he, he kinda says that we all misunderstood his message and that's not what he was saying is to work 4,000 hours a week until your, you know, your fingernails fell off and you didn't know if you're sleeping, you're fucking not working. And so maybe we misunderstood that. I actually really, really enjoy his message now because again, it goes back to like what you just said, it's that positivity thing. It's about being a good person. You want to work a hundred hours that's on you, right? That that
Marc Nudelberg (23:46):
makes you happy. And it's really funny cause he pulled it up, put out a video yesterday. He's like, people think that like I'm hating on the people that play Madden all day or that binge watch Netflix. Like I'm not hating on you. If that's what you do, I'm hating on you. If that's what you do and you're unhappy, you're making the decision to do those things. Like, choose to be happy, figure out what makes you happy. Like if you're in a job because you make a lot of money but you're not really happy with that job, dude, you got to make the decision. Like what's more important, your happiness for that paycheck. Like you can go get paid anywhere. Like, so for me this year was really about figuring out could I be happy doing something else. I think I was fortunate that I do stand behind a product and ESPN digital and ESPN audio that I believe in, that makes it easier for me to have the conversation with people because I believe in what we do and how we do it. That's not the case for everybody, you know? So I think, you know, finding that was huge for me. Don't buy TV, don't buy TV today. I learned that today. It's dead. Oh man. Are you, are you a cable?
Vaughan Dugan (24:53):
Yeah, a quarter. We cut it about a year ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's been, well, you know, listen, we also have a four year olds were really aware of what we present in the house to him. You know, we're not like Uber fucking crazy helicopter parents, but we just want to make sure that he's not flipping through YouTube videos, checking out porn at four years old. No doubt worrying about that. We'll wait till he's five for that, but I guess fuck, and this is, this is, this is cool. I love how you just grabbed the mic and I appreciate that because that would be sat there for probably a month till I had the nerve to start this up. And again, going back to Gary V, not giving him too much credit, but he's got the Gary V experiment going on right now. We've created our first piece of content together and if you didn't slide that microphone off the wall, this content would not have happened. I probably still wouldn't have my first episode, so thank you for that. Glad I'm glad the pop. The cherry. Can I say that we're dropping the F bomb and busting Sherry's maraschino cherries? Of course. Actually. What's the a, it's the, this is the plug for the bowl now. What's the cherries? Cherry. Bundy. Yes, there we go. Cherry juice. So with that,
Marc Nudelberg (25:59):
that's, I think I can say this out loud, but like just so everybody knows like this is their last year of their title sponsorship. Maybe they'll renew, maybe they won't. But if you want to put your name on a bowl game, holler at me.
Vaughan Dugan (26:10):
I do have a question. I hate getting to the politics of, of college sports, but this is really new to me. Oscar's here, is it one of my best friends? I'm not dialed into sports. I follow sports, I follow my teams. I don't know half the people you're talking about earlier, full transparency. But like I've heard things, I've read things online about the politics of bowl games. Yeah. So a lot of people were angry that like they, they feel like, Oh they, they, they forced FAU to come here. We're doing it just service to these FAU kids by making them play here locally. It seemed for me as a local resident, Holy fuck, they're in my backyard. I get to go cheer on our owls in our backyard. In a ballgame. It's, it's still a ballgame.
Marc Nudelberg (26:51):
Well, so he and I would pose the question to those people that were complaining about FAU, getting forced to play in the local ballgame is were they willing to buy, go ticket to see them play in Memphis? No, they haven't. Like you know what, like you did them a favor because you know what, most of the kids on FAS roster are probably from South Florida anyway. Right. So now their parents don't have to buy plane tickets and hotels to go stay somewhere to watch a plane of Bogan. They have to play the see them play in a bowl game at home. How cool is that? So like everything is perspective. I think, you know, it depends on how you look at it. There's two sides to every glass
Vaughan Dugan (27:23):
touch on something important. I go to some of the games here at FAU when I can and it's pretty sad. Pretty empty. Yeah. We've got, we've got a good team.
Marc Nudelberg (27:33):
Lane train love him. Did it, did a great job of winning games. Probably didn't do a great job of building, you know, a fan base and being out in the community and getting people who want to be involved with him. So like, yeah, you did a great job of winning games and you got to win to have success and like have people come, but you also have to like build relationships and have people want to come. So you know, it's two sides to that. How's tagger going to change that you think you can do? I think he can. Yes, I think he can do. I think he will. I don't know. I don't know. It's interesting to me like this is an interesting hire. Do I think it's a bad hire? No, not, not necessarily. Think he's shown that he can be successful at the, you know, mid-major level, the group of five level, you know, I think probably prove that he couldn't do that at the power five level, but it still takes like work to be out in the community. And I don't know if that's his emo or not. You know? So like, and does he relate to the people in Boca? Like, right, there's a certain demographic of people in Boca that are going to go to FAU games. Like can he connect with those people? Can he create motivation to get them into the seats? And you know, that's the job of the athletic director and the head coach and all of those people of creating that urgency.
Vaughan Dugan (28:45):
It's funny you've just defined the marketing strategy for like every restaurant that comes in from out of town thinks they can just set up camp. Oh, I've got restaurants in New York and LA and it's like that's fine, but what are you going to do for us? We live here three 65
Marc Nudelberg (29:02):
how are you going to get in the community? Make people go there. What's in it for me? That is the question that is in every single relationship is like, great, we're cool, but what's in this for me? Like, and that's the world we live in. So
Vaughan Dugan (29:17):
all right, talk to me. What's next? What's more to Mark noodle Berg up to next? I don't want, you know, you've got a job right now. We're not looking to, you seem really happy in what you're doing, but we know this isn't the end of the road for you. In your pursuit for entrepreneurship, what would you love to do? [inaudible]
Marc Nudelberg (29:33):
I misleading. I misleading a lot, like motivating the kids every day to get back to the process and to get to the grind and forget about the scoreboard. Forget about our record, whether we're 12 and O or whether we're Owen 12 like it's about going back to the grindstone today. I miss that a lot. So I dunno, maybe I go coach high school football somewhere one day. I don't know. Maybe I find a way to do that in business. Maybe I create a note. Yeah. Just a bandaid for that feeling. Yeah. I think that you deserve to be doing something because you naturally are a leader. Right? I appreciate that. Feels like it. You've had success doing it, but like it takes a certain kind of person to be a leader. Yeah. And I would love to do that. And so maybe I build up enough, you know, rapport in the business community that I'm able to do that for, you know, whether it be sales professionals or organizational structure, talking to people about how to build a successful organization.
Marc Nudelberg (30:31):
I was really fortunate enough to do that in the sports world and a lot of different ways and I know what the key elements are to it. You know, defined roles, communication boundaries. You stay in sports. Is that like you still, you still love, I mean you obviously love sports. I see, I see six TVs, five games. Yeah. You know, every Monday on LinkedIn I usually put out like a teaching life through sport cause I believe in that as a coach. That's what I used to really preach. And recruiting was like you couldn't ask to get pretty phenomenal to make a correlation between business and coaching, which you are a coach. And to me it's like you can teach life through sport like and but the great thing about sport is that you get a scoreboard every time there's a winner and a loser. Like your effort was either good enough and your execution was either good enough or it wasn't.
Marc Nudelberg (31:22):
And you can relate that a little bit to business. It's not as fine. Yeah we get a thermometer. Yeah. Actually you don't get the WC. Yeah and it's way, it's all much longer process like you know, you know, opening a partnership and doing a deal in business or opening a restaurant and having it be successful takes years, months, years, decades. So like in football it was one week lifespan. You put together the game plan, you practice the game plan, you execute it on Saturday you either won or loss and then quick turnaround cause we've got to do it again this week boys. So like that clip hit after hit after hit with this guy.
Marc Nudelberg (31:59):
But you're right, they're like we do have a lot more runway to fine tune our business. Where you didn't, you fight. Well let's look at videos tomorrow. The next team I've got to, if I go into a meeting and completely tank it and like ruin it, that I'll just go find another meeting to have like, and another opportunity in football. You got 12 games on your schedule. If you screw up the first Saturday, yeah, you're not getting that one back. Nope. You're not going to go ever go be able to go back and say, Oh, you know what? I'm going to go get three more games to make up for that one that L is there forever. So that was the thing that's cool about being in sports and that's why I love sports, is that it's very definitive. You get a yes or no answer every single time, but it's cool to translate it to business and to the real life.
Marc Nudelberg (32:46):
You know, obviously in hindsight you'd say, Oh yeah, well you're a coach, you're a leader. That's sort of natural fit to business. But it's amazing how, how many parallels you can make to coaching and a business. Not just, not just from a leadership standpoint, but from like the fundamentals of like how to change the culture of a business. You've got to deal with that as well. You go into a new restaurant, you've got staff, they don't know you well. So like that's like a coaching change. Like we were talking about that earlier and I was going to draw that point, but we went off onto another tangent. But like, so like if you start a company, like you started a company and then this CEO came in and said, there's not room for both of us. It's my show. Or you're showing, you said, okay, I'm stepping out.
Marc Nudelberg (33:23):
But how many people were still in that business that you brought into that business, right? That you left and all of a sudden the culture was way different. So like that's not what they signed up for when they signed up to work, but that's the hand they got dealt. Now they have a decision to make. Can I stay just should I stay or should I leave those kids at FAU who are freshmen who signed up to play with lane. They don't have an option. There's no, they don't. They're not allowed to just leave if they want to leave. That's it. How does their there, how does that kid feel right now? A summer might be happy. Somebody's gotten there and been like, Oh this isn't what he recruited me on like this. No can please educate me. I don't like rules. There are rules. There are reasons that you can and can't leave in order to be so you could, you can transfer it.
Marc Nudelberg (34:05):
I'm not saying like they're locked in and they can't do it, but there's a cost to it if you move to the same level. So all these kids are division one athletes. If they want to go play at another division one school, they lose a year of eligibility. No shit. 100% wow. Unless there's a show cause. So like Justin Fields, who was the number one quarterback in the country who signed with Georgia two years ago, went to Georgia, sat the bench, saw he was never going to beat out Jake Fromm for the job. Right. So then decided to transfer. Well there was a show cause there apparently there was some racial things that were said to him from somebody on the baseball team, whether it's real or not, it doesn't matter. There was show cause they let him out. He got to go to Ohio state and he started his first year.
Marc Nudelberg (34:49):
He didn't lose any eligibility. That's awesome. But you have to appeal. You have to go through a whole process in order to do that. Why? There's not a rule that says if you sign on to play for a head coach and that head coach leaves, you're immediately eligible for transfer. Why is that not a thing? Why won't they allow kids to do that? Especially if they base your recruitment on coming to play for you in paradise. Come play, come hop on the lane train and he's having, he's saying the same thing now at Ole miss. Look on Twitter. There's a lane train in Oxford. You know the lane train stops in Oxford. I got a call this morning from a good friend of mine, and I'm not going to mention his name, Bo Eaton, but he was working out at a gym this morning and lane was in the gym this morning in Boca working out. Yeah. He hopped on campus today. He was in the office around the coaches year old miss gear.
Vaughan Dugan (35:39):
We're like, dude, we get it. We know you don't let the train hit you in the ass. There it is. I'm kidding. I'm grateful that that FAU is starting to pay attention to the program though. You know, it's, it's, I'm just happy to have a football team here. Right? A good football team. I mean we get some people in the stands. I am not gonna lie. When I first came to FAU, it was a behind the scenes called find another university and we were typically the misfits that could not get into the other schools in Florida. Right. But it, to see what Dr. Kelly has done with the school. And again, I, I, in full disclosure, I am involved with the school. I'm on the college of education advisory board. And I'm not just saying this, but I'm involved with the school now because I see what he's doing to the school and what he's done for the school.
Vaughan Dugan (36:22):
Right. And how much he cares about the school. I don't know how long he's going to be here. It's not the point. It's just for once. I feel like we've got the opportunity to be taken seriously as a, as a university, it helps the community. Being a business owner. I see how it translates to sales. Okay. So I have a question for you. Oh shit. Because this right, here we go. This is a thing on every campus now. Okay. Is this school of entrepreneurship? Yes. Right. I think having a school of entrepreneurship and having a startup tank are two very different things. Okay. Like if you have an incubator for small businesses or people in college that are starting businesses, yes. That's way different than having a school of entrepreneurship. 100% right. Yep. So what do you think about being able to graduate from the school of entrepreneurship?
Vaughan Dugan (37:08):
Is that a thing? Is that a real degree or is that like the kinesiology degree that you can get? You know, like my wife probably thinks kinesiology is a a degree, so I love you honey. He eats Aegis for anybody who doesn't know what kinesiology. Yeah. Honestly, no, I don't. I don't think you graduate with anything. I think having some of the tools that they're teaching is super fucking important because when I first came to FAU, I went to the college of business and it's all black and white. It's about the fundamentals of, of financials and about the P. and, L. it's it, you know, you learned about marketing and things like that, but it's all textbook shit. You, they got it or your don't. But going through a school of entrepreneurship and, and I, I do stuff with the school of entrepreneurship, so listen, I'm outspoken about it.
Vaughan Dugan (37:56):
It's up to the individual. So I'll give you a quick example. I was fortunate enough to be involved with the most recent, I forgot what it was called, but the whole semester it was a class based on entrepreneurship where it was real life stuff where they got to pair up with local businesses and they tried to solve a problem. So they bid on it in terms of they, they put a proposal in for a certain ask from the business, a certain, you know, we needed some data study done or some data research, blah blah blah. But it could be anything from like a creating a marketing plan, a go to a go to launch plan, whatever it is. And these students of the school of entrepreneurship we're assigned to these businesses, they were left alone, meaning the professors were like, here's your chance, I'm going to check in with you once a week, basically by email or by class or whatever.
Vaughan Dugan (38:44):
And it was kind of up to the business and up to the students to talk on a regular basis. And it's amazing how fast some of those people disappear. You don't see these students. And as somebody who has multiple businesses, I didn't have time to chase people, so I was probably, I failed them probably as much as they failed me and I, I had three really good people and I kept in touch with them separately. But it's just amazing. Like, and it got me thinking, to your point, I was like, what is this? Right? What exactly are they teaching? Right? You know, I, I dunno, it's a great question because I think about it. I'm like, Hm, I wonder if they would have gone to school for that. But then I think like, well my dad is an entrepreneur, so I watched it happen from a time that I was a kid and like, I don't know, can you really learn that?
Vaughan Dugan (39:30):
I wouldn't know. I was just gonna say I went to school for it too, but it wasn't in school. I got my MBA. Not literally. I got my MBA working, pulling up my fucking socks, being in it, learning, you know, taking your L's and figuring out, Oh, that was a bad move. Stuck in the back office of the business that I had started, you know, under the thumb of another CEO. That's dude. Like, so how'd you learn so much? It's like, I just fucking did it. I lived through it. I got to talk to your dad. I think your dad and I and yourself, you need to write a book on what not to do. It would be the biggest entrepreneurship book. Teach classes off of it. The playbook. They would, I'm sure they would. Listen, I don't want to keep you, we're at 45 minutes.
Vaughan Dugan (40:15):
Not that that matters, but a, you got a suit on today with a fancy pin. Yeah, we're both looking at our phones. Not that that matters because I think it's just we're, I think we're, we need more shots. Oscar. Oscar, do you want to call in? I have a Bluetooth with my fancy new podcast equipment here. Mark, I really do appreciate you. I enjoy hanging out with you.
Marc Nudelberg (40:36):
Love it. Really love it.
Vaughan Dugan (40:38):
You keep me inspired and a fuck and you just, you made me look bad on my first podcast. Dude, this is awesome. This is fun. This is awesome. I'm glad to be the first guest. I am going to see you and I'll see you tomorrow. We're gonna have some fun. We're going to be serving up fucking some tuna tacos and some duck tacos and the VIP tent Boca Bowl. Let's go. And by the time you hear this, it could be Christmas next year, but I'm going to do, I've got to talk to your dad. What the fuck do I do with this thing now? Yeah. What does one do with the podcast without an entire production team behind me?
Marc Nudelberg (41:06):
Oh man. The great, greatest part is I think is you can just end it and then give it out peace and pull up your socks.