Hope For America | Bob Bennett

About Bob Bennett

Former Senator Bob Bennett is the chairman of Bennett Group International, a private business and governmental consulting group he founded after leaving government service in 2011. As a U.S. Senator from Utah, he was a senior member of the Senate Banking Committee and a member of the distinguished Joint Economic Committee. He also served as the ranking Republican on the Senate Rules Committee and as a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Prior to his election to the U.S. Senate in 1992, he served as the CEO of Franklin Quest, Inc. (NYSE), where he grew the business from four employees to more than 1,000. He has a long distinguished record in business and public policy and has been instrumental in the launching and growth of enterprises large and small in many different fields. Bob is married to the former Joyce McKay and is the father of six children.

Interview Transcript of: Hope For America | Bob Bennett

Alan
Welcome back. I’m here today with former Senator Bob Bennett. Welcome to the show. Thank you. So a piece of trivia not many people know is that you’re the grandson of Heber J. Grant. That’s correct. Who is the president of the LDS church?

Bob
That’s correct. And he was one of Utah’s premier entrepreneurs, as was my other grandfather, John is Bennett I come from good entrepreneurial stock.

Alan
So growing up, I guess you had that entrepreneurial blood within you, starting new companies and well leading companies.

Bob
By the time I came along, the companies were mature, and I went to work at them. I had my first job when I was 14, at the Bennett glass and paint company that was founded by my grandfather, John F. Bennett. My father was running it at the time. And then he stepped out of that position to run for the United States Senate.

Alan
So politics, what year was that that he entered into the UN.

Bob
He won the Senate seat in 1950. And moved on into that world, the political world. I followed him in 1992, and the campaign, but I’ve spent most of my life oscillating back and forth between the business world and the political world. I’ve held a number of positions in both

Alan
Now right before you went into 92 into the political world. You are running a company called the Franklin day planner.

Bob
Called Franklin Institute as it was originally founded, then it became known as Franklin quest. And after I left, stepped down as the CEO and went to the Senate, why it merged with the covey Leadership Institute and became known as Franklin Covey.

Alan
How did that have that come about you taking the role into the Franklin?

Bob
Well, it was started originally as two companies. One hire HW Smith and Associates by my friend Hiram Smith, and the other known is Franklin Institute, Hiram and a group of other investors and one company did seminars on time management, and the Franklin Institute printed day planners. And Hiram called me, I was living in California at the time, Hiram called me and said, we’ve got this little company going, and we’d like some of your advice and help as to how to do it. Would you come to Salt Lake and spend the day with us talking about it? The company that I had been president of had just itself been acquired in salt in California. So I had a little spare time. I was still running it as a division of the larger parent company. But they gave me a little time and I said, I’d like to go to Salt Lake and just look at this thing. At the end of the day, when I had given them a series of recommendations as to how they should run the company hire him said, Well, why don’t you just come on board as the CEO and run it yourself? They had only four full time employees at the time. It was headquartered in hirings basement in Centerville, Utah. And he said to me, Bob, I know this sounds very, very outrageous, but we think we can do a million dollars a year. Well, I thought, you know, I can run this company on my lunch hour, this is not a big deal. And I can do it kind of long distance flying up from California every now and then. We did a million and a half that first year. And then we did three and a half. And then we did seven. And then we did 15. And it kept doubling in size. I quit my job in California along the way moved to Salt Lake and build it up. We eventually went on the New York Stock Exchange with a market cap of $300 million. Plus, what a

Alan
Great ride that was. So it wasn’t so 92. What gave me the inspiration to jump into the political arena and run for Senate.

Bob
Well, I had stepped down as the CEO of Franklin, because, frankly, I was a little bit burned out that that’s very hard work. entrepreneurs need to understand that this is a a more than a full time job. This is a complete immersion. And as I say we had gone from that little organization to a company that was poised to go public. And I could see that it was launched now. And I just kind of had the feeling I wanted to do something else. So I stepped down as the CEO and did not know what I was going to do. I thought Well, I’ll start a consulting practice and see what comes in over the door and the first thing that came in, was Hiram himself say and fellow saying he wanted to run for the Senate and what I managed his campaign. Well, I had managed several campaigns for my father, he served in the Senate for four terms. And I thought, you know, I know how to do that. But before we do this, Hiram, I said, let’s find out if it’s doable. Let’s find out if it’s possible for you to win the nomination, because conventional wisdom said that Joe cannon had it all wrapped up. He said, Well, can you? Could you figure that out? I said, Yeah, I can. And I analyze this. And it’s very much like an entrepreneurial startup, you have to analyze the market, you have to see where your funding is going to come from. You have to determine your message. Figure out what your brand is going to be how you’re going to attack the market. And the one difference is a 49%. Market share isn’t good enough. You have to have a 51% market share in order to be successful. Anyway, I analyzed it, I said to Hiram, you can be the next senator from the state of Utah. If you want to be you can be, yes, Joe can and can be beaten. And I think I know how to do it. And he said, let’s go, let’s do it. I thought my first client, and then he came to me and said, You know, I’ve thought it over. And I’ve decided I don’t want to do it for a whole series of reasons. And I was very disappointed, because of my juices were flowing again that I was going to do this. And Hiram and some others said, why don’t you just do it yourself? Instead of running somebody else’s campaign, why don’t you just get into it? My first reaction was, No, I’m smarter than that. I don’t put my name on the ballot, I just run the campaign for somebody else. But the idea took hold. And the more I thought about it, the more I thought, Well, why not? Then I had an interesting experience, which your viewers might find of some value. I sat down with my Father. This was he was still alive at the time, and still very lucid. And he had had a very successful business career, not only running the business that he inherited from his father, but running businesses that he had started. And then he’d had a successful political career, starting from scratch the Senate was the first position he had ever run for. And so I sat down with him and said, I’m thinking about running for the Senate. And he ran me through a catechism of very probing questions. And they were questions about me, and about my motives, about my capacities. They were not questions about public issues at all. And at the end, he said, I don’t see that you have anything to lose? Why don’t you try it? Now, those are pretty good things to say to an entrepreneur, and I don’t think that you have anything glues. And why don’t you try?

Alan
It speaks to the fact that you weren’t afraid to take that risk. Yeah. And so in Fast forwarding this through you, you spent all these years in Washington who 10 years, 18 years up to 2010 or so. And that you were known as a fiscally conservative. Republican? Yes. And you. You served on various committees over the years. Yes. So 2010, you stepped out and, and then went back into the, the?

Bob
Yeah, it wasn’t, it was a period of transition. It wasn’t as clean cut and as carefully analyzed, as I might have liked it. I had a number of people come at me with a number of offers. And I wasn’t quite sure which ones I wanted to take. And I sorted through them, and ended up with a heavy foot in Washington, where there were a lot of people who wanted my skills there. And one foot, not quite so much weight on it, in Utah. And the interesting thing that has happened in the years since since then, is that I still have one foot in Washington and one foot in Utah, but the center of gravity has moved more away from Washington, so that the heavier foot now is coming in Utah. And the interesting thing about that, while most of the original people who came to me for advice, and my my contacts and whatever help I could give them were on the political side. Now most of the most of the consulting work I do is on the business side. And interestingly, the political side has frozen up. The Congress is doing nothing.

Alan
What do you think the logjam is happening? A lot of people sit back and say, Well, why can’t they do this? What would you say the fundamental premises of lack of being able to move things forward?

Bob
There are a lot of reasons for that. And we could spend your whole program talking through it, the electorate has become more polarized than it was during my time there. My time there. When you worked with a Democrat to solve a problem, you got credit for being a problem solver. Now, if you work with a Democrat to solve a problem, you’re attacked as a traitor to your values? Well, one of my driving values is solve problems. That’s why I went to government. I remember when I first got there. There was a fellow who was speaking to the Republican senators at a retreat, and he said, the duty of the opposition party is to oppose. Here, I am a brand new freshman senator, I raised my hand and I said, That’s not why I came to Washington. This is what we had all your Republican I said, Sure. I’m a Republican. But I came to Washington to legislate. I’m a legislator. And if I can’t legislate solutions to our nation’s problems, strictly within the Republican Party, I’m going to reach out and see if I can find some Democrat, and convince him to come over with me for a free market solution to this problem. And I was able to do that many times, that became, say, an act of betrayal to some people in the Republican Party. And so they they said, Well, you move along, right now, the parties, they do not want to break away from their ideological moorings, even to have a conversation, let alone to make a deal. Now that will change, the needs of the country are so overwhelming, it has to change. But right now, we’ve we’ve got this polarization, and it’s, it’s digging in rather than working itself out. And so I’m saying, you know, if I were there, now, I would not be able to do the whole reason I went there for in the first place. And there are more opportunities to change society, and the direction of America, outside in the private sector than there are in government. So I am delighted to, to have been placed in the private sector. It wasn’t voluntary, and I was mad for a while. But as I look back on it, I say, you know, the delegates did me a huge favor, and I’m grateful to them.

Alan
What message would you give to the youth of today?

Bob
Be optimistic, be optimistic. One of the things that bothered me the most about the campaign that I had my final campaign in 2010, was the number of people that came up to me with a sense of complete despair. And they they talked about what I’ve just described, the polarization and the lack of a lack of progress. And I remember one, one sweet woman in Utah County and came up to me and she was she was literally trembling. She was, she said, I am so afraid for our country. These are the worst times we have ever had in our entire history. And I said, would you have liked to live during the Civil War? And she said, Well, no. You know, we were killing each other. Ultimately, a civil war. We killed more Americans in the civil war than all the other wars we fought, put together, killing each other. Now, that was a worst time to say so said, she said, you know, well, but that’s the worst in our lifetimes. And I said, No, I remember Vietnam. I remember the bitterness and the division. And they were shooting students on campus, over the divisions in Viet Vietnam. That was the worst period of time. We have come out of these, the basic spirit of America is still there. And if you’re sitting there saying, oh, there’s no opportunity left because Congress is dysfunctional. When the government is shut down, governments don’t lead. They never have governments react. The leading comes from the economy, and it comes from private citizens. And then governments react to what is necessary to allow that kind of progress to go forward. Theodore Roosevelt didn’t invent the Industrial Revolution, the industrial revolution came home, changed America. And then Theodore Roosevelt kind of reinvented government to react to some of the excesses that came out of that circumstance. And our post war, Ronald Reagan reacted to the realities of the Cold War. And then the realities of globalization came along. And we haven’t yet reacted properly to all of those, but we will. So if you’re a young entrepreneur, if you’re a young person who has big dreams for the future, there’s no better place in the world for you to be than America. And there’s no better place that can incubate your dreams, and turn them into something that is growing and powerful. And that can make you successful, then the American economy, it’s the deepest, most resilient, most well integrated economy in the world. And you have an opportunity here, as powerful as any opportunity that anybody ever had seize it, and go forward and make your dreams come true.

Alan
That’s great. But we’ve been visiting here with Bob Bennett. He’s a former US senator, but also a great entrepreneur over life who’s served in various roles throughout his career. Bob

Bob
Thank you for being on today’s show. My pleasure. Good to be with you.

Alan
We’ll be right back after these messages.

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This transcript was generated by software and may not accurately reflect exactly what was said.

Alan Olsen, is the Host of the American Dreams Show and the Managing Partner of GROCO.com.  GROCO is a premier family office and tax advisory firm located in the San Francisco Bay area serving clients all over the world.

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