Let's Ride w/ Paul Estrada

Public Relations Expert

• Paul Estrada • Season 1 • Episode 3

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Discover the art of building lasting relationships with the unassuming yet insightful Scott Fosgard, a 40 year public relations veteran. Despite his introverted nature, Scott has expertly navigated the world of media, government, and employee relations, turning what some might see as a challenge into his greatest asset. Through this episode, listeners will learn how Scott's journey from aspiring sports reporter to PR entrepreneur underscores the power of networking and the hidden potential of every connection.

Join us as we unravel the fine balancing act between extroversion and introversion in public relations and event management. We uncover the strategies behind creating memorable interactions with everyone from journalists to waiters in your local restaurant. emphasizing how genuine connections can lead to a long lasting and successful career.

From navigating pivotal career decisions to the unexpected leap into entrepreneurship at the age of 57, his story is a testament to how a solid reputation and strong relationships can open doors even in the face of uncertainty. As we wrap up, there's a heartfelt reflection on gratitude and the thrill of exploring new opportunities, reminding us all of the beauty in embracing the unknown.


Paul:

Hey Adrian, I want to talk to you about meeting new people. So you just started to go to a new school and you didn't know anybody there. You didn't have any friends or anything like that.

Speaker 2:

I do. I have them right now.

Paul:

Oh, now you do. But what about when you first started and you were the new kid at school? Did you have to make new friends?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I tried.

Paul:

Yeah, and how did you try to make new friends?

Speaker 2:

I'm like maybe you could be my friend, and they're like sure.

Paul:

Oh, it's that easy. Yeah, you just went up to somebody and you're like, hey, maybe we could be friends. Yeah, and he's like, yeah, sure.

Speaker 2:

But there's this kid, aiden, and he's my friend. There's like two Aidens and there's Aiden K and A and H and A and H is my friend and we're actually really good friends like really good friends.

Paul:

He's like one of my bestest friends, and how did you guys become like? How did he become your best friend?

Speaker 2:

Um just um, he became my best friend, just like I told you how easy it was.

Paul:

Oh. So you just went up to him and said hey, will you be my friend? He said yeah, sure. And then you guys just became really good friends.

Speaker 2:

And then we like do stuff together, like lots of stuff.

Paul:

So you made friends really easily then, huh.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, but I don't have many.

Paul:

Well, but you just need a couple of really good ones, right.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Paul:

I'm talking to a guy today who it's called public relations, and his job is to make friends with as many people as he can, and those people help him do his job better, they help him get new jobs, and so he's really really good at making new friends. How I think he just is really good at having them talk about themselves and getting to know them really well.

Speaker 2:

Okay, bye, Bye guys.

Paul:

Our guest today has been in the public relations business for 40 years, specializing in the automotive industry. He's a self-proclaimed introvert who somehow managed to become an expert at building and maintaining relationships and has leveraged those skills to work for some of the largest auto manufacturers in the world. When life dealt him a setback, 30 years into his career, he leveraged those relationships to start his own communications firm, where he's breaking all the biggest news in the automotive tech space. We are very excited to have on the show today Scott Fosgard so let's ride, let's ride all through the rain.

Speaker 2:

Come on and take me anywhere that you want to be All right.

Paul:

So, scott, I got to tell you, when I think of PR, the phrase that comes to mind is this is going to be a PR nightmare. Now, I'm sure that that's not a fair spin on what you do, but does that make sense to you? Why would I think that when PR comes to mind, it's because my whole life is a nightmare.

Scott Fosgard:

Yeah, every day is a nightmare, yeah, it's. And people throw around the phrase like they know what it means. Right? You hear people you know whether it be in politics or business like oh you know. So I spent an entire semester in college trying to learn what PR was.

Paul:

Okay.

Scott Fosgard:

And try to define it. We only have an hour, paul, so let's see if we can make it simpler. So if you break those two words into two, if you think about publics and then relations people understand relations, whether it be in business or in a family or with spouses you get that part right. So then you think in terms of publics, well, who are you trying to reach? So in the space that I'm in, I'm in what's called media relations, so I'm trying to influence what third-party reporters are going to write about a subject or a client or a topic. But there's other publics like there's government relations, there's employee relations, there's supplier relations, there's business to business relations, there's investor relations right, those are just some obvious ones. So hopefully people can get their head around. It's really relating to a public and practically for me it's media.

Paul:

And let's talk about the relation aspect of it. So I'm in procurement, I've been doing that for a lot of years and I would say that sounds similar. I have to, like you just mentioned, I have to have relationships with suppliers and build those relationships, and that's how I negotiate deals and things like that. I think what's a little, maybe a little bit different maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong is mine has a pretty significant component of math involved, where I have to be looking at bids that are coming in. I have to analyze those, manipulate the data to figure out what my negotiating position is, and then I would say the other 50% is that relationship component.

Paul:

In PR, would you say, is it more heavily focused on that relationship side? I'm assuming there's not really any math involved. So, as people are thinking about what do I like, what I not like to do, for me it's like okay, I like a little math, but I like the personal aspect of it. But if you don't like the math part, here's some other careers that are more heavy relations. Is that a fair way to describe it?

Scott Fosgard:

Well, it is a frustration for the industry because it's very hard to measure the impact. If you think in terms of impressions that people form over time, right, how do we draw the impressions we have? Again, whether it's, you know, the sports team that we follow, or the recent election, or the way you react to a product or a company, right? So, in theory, what people in my space do is they. We know that we form our impressions over time and the more something's repeated, the frequency, the better, right? So I have a lot of clients say well, how do I know that what you do is going to work? And I have to say look, you have to understand this concept. And it's crazy because people, advertising is no different, right? How do you know advertising works? You assume that a company is spending for the Super Bowl ads and they're spending millions of dollars just for the time, not to mention millions more for the production of the ad. How do you know that works? And does a one-time ad really work?

Scott Fosgard:

I had a boss once say to me he said when's the last time somebody said to you I know that's true, I saw it in an ad. No one says that, right, right, so it's really a, if you want to use the word, science. It's a science of how do we inform our impressions and what makes up those impressions and how do you influence that. So I don't know that I would steer anyone away from a career in PR if they had an appetite for science or math. What's fun about what I do is so much of what I try to quantify around a product or a benefit comes down to math. It's better than something else by a percentage. Or it saves time by this much, or it saves money by this much, right. So you can see where math like if you're covering companies and their earnings, right, math is really important.

Paul:

So a lot of companies- Like interpreting results and things like that. Absolutely yeah, all right, guys. So basically, I'm sorry to inform you, there is no escaping math in any career. So thank you for clarifying that, scott. For those of you that were trying, I want to focus more on that relationship component because that's like an art right and talk a little bit about how you I mean you've been doing this for 30, 40 years just the degree of how you establish a relationship, how you build it, how you maintain it. Just speak a little bit to that, if you could.

Scott Fosgard:

I find that the hardest thing to teach. I've had a lot of companies and bosses who say, hey, can you impart some of that knowledge of what you do to people who are coming up in the career? You know, I think if we draw from life, you know it's a little bit like any other interaction with friends. Or again, you know you think of a spouse if you're married but like if you just go back to when you're in high school, right, relationships have to be to there has to be a benefit for both parties or becomes very one-sided and that friend feels like you're using them. So for me and what I do, it's very important that I establish that it's a relationship with those reporters, that they're benefiting from knowledge that I have or connections that I have, and that I'm help in their case framing up what's really newsworthy and sparing them a lot of the work to find the news in a trade show or an auto show, right. And then for my clients, it's obvious that they want that. They pay me because of those relationships.

Scott Fosgard:

So if you could drop in on me in an environment that I create with those reporters, I am all about that time with them. I don't have typically even my phone with me, my eyes are on them. It's a lot of listening right and knowing them and maybe filing away some of the things that they've shared in the past so that you know I'm sure you do this. You know it's always a nice touch if you can remember if they have family, you know, if they have kids, even if their loyalty is with Michigan State Spartans, you know, you remember those things. So that's kind of how I approach it and I think, paul, you're not that different right, I see you do it.

Paul:

Yeah, we do it. I like what you said there about a balanced relationship. So what's interesting is I'm a buyer, which means it could be very imbalanced. Right, I have something that people want, I have business that people want, and so I see that balance that has to be struck up. I get that feeling or that thought when I'm like this is feeling like this other side is taking a lot and I'm not getting a lot, and that's my perception, right or wrong.

Paul:

But you're absolutely right, I see that balance and again I'll go back to I use the word that comes to mind is it's an art form of how do I find this balance? And I guess for people, then it's if you want to be an expert in communication and almost there's like a degree of psychology, even right, of like understanding what makes people tick and how they think and whatnot, right? So yeah, I find that really fascinating. And then, I guess, talk to people about initially forming that relationship, because I feel like that's one of the hardest parts is, I don't know you at all and I've got to get you to like me, right.

Scott Fosgard:

Quickly right, Because there's a whole line of people that are trying to get you to like them right that you're competing against. And I go back to your example and I got to believe, at the end of the day, trust matters a lot. It comes down to whether you can trust this person if they're genuine right, and you and I both can see people who are putting on effects and don't sincerely mean what they're saying, right. So that kind of invites a little suspicion. So I want to share this because I think it so shapes me. I'm an introvert.

Paul:

No, no way. Yeah, most people who know me say there's no way.

Scott Fosgard:

Okay, I'm an introvert and when I was a boy, my dad, we would go on vacation in Florida. In those days, if people with their families can imagine this, there were a lot of motels in Florida and other places where the motel would be laid out with outdoor commons around a pool, and then there might be, in my case, 30, 40 units that are to be rented, and we were there for two weeks. My dad made it a point to meet every single family that was vacationing during the two weeks we were there, and we were there for two weeks. My dad made it a point to meet every single family that was vacationing during the two weeks we were there. And you know what he did. He made me, at 13 years old, come meet the marshmallow salesman from Minnesota, as he's having this deep conversation in a cabana And- hey, as a 13 year old, that's a good guy to know, right, right?

Scott Fosgard:

It's the last thing I wanted to do, and you know, when my dad passed away, I said this at his funeral like that was a gift that I had no idea. And so what did I learn from that? Well, here's what I know is, most people like to talk about themselves. They're most comfortable about themselves, and so when you're at a loss for what to talk about, oh my gosh, here's an easy start Tell me about yourself. What do you do, what are you interested? What teams do you follow? If sports is a thing that you're talking about or it just gets the conversation flowing, very few people then turn around and ask me well, tell me about you. Very few people show that curiosity. I experienced that as well. Oh, but my gosh, if that's one thing if I could impart to anyone who is early in their career or kind of sifting through careers they're going to choose, is, show that kind ofold and a six-year-old boys and want to guide them on their career path, start planting seeds.

Paul:

They're probably a little too young to be working right, but just start to plant seeds, and so I love what you said there about your dad seeming to be very deliberate about teaching you a skill. Maybe that you didn't know at the time was basically going to be the extremely important foundation that was going to make you a successful professional down the road.

Scott Fosgard:

So that is the thing that employs me, like that skill Cause, paul, you and I know I have no other skills Like I'm. I can't?

Paul:

you're a great boatsman. I know that I can.

Scott Fosgard:

I can operate the boats, but can I fix them? No. So yeah, as I've gone through my career, it's the part that I love like becomes very fascinating to me, and if you want to use math, it's really a math equation. What can I do to trigger this relationship quickly and get this person to confide in me and trust in me, so that part becomes really interesting. It's so bad, paul, and you know my son Drew and my daughter Erin. They roll their eyes when we go into a restaurant because what happens?

Scott Fosgard:

I interview the waitress or the waitstaff, I try to make it a point to have a conversation with them. And, paul, now I spend my Tuesdays and Wednesdays driving our other son, corey, to a program in a town that's about 50 miles away. So I have to go eat breakfast somewhere. I have about 10 breakfast spots in this little city, canton, where I know all the waitresses and they kind of like look forward to seeing me because I might be the rare customer that actually shows interest in them. You know what I mean. You could practice this all through your life, before you get out of school, before you get into your career, and it's not hard.

Paul:

Well, I think a lot of people, you get out of school before you get into your career and it's not hard. Well, I think a lot of people like introverts right, they almost seem like they're resigned to their fate, and what I mean by that is they say okay, well, when I get a job I need to be a heavy analyst, where I just stick my head behind a computer screen and crunch numbers all day and rarely interact with people. I've had people come up to me and tell me that before, and so I think hopefully for those listening, they can be encouraged by the fact is, hey, you could be an introvert and still do something that has a extrovert vibe to it. I don't know a better word for it, right, but that is something that you can overcome and it's not going to hamstring you in the types of careers that you can pursue.

Scott Fosgard:

So let me add one more thought here to the introverts, right. So this is how I manage those days. So you know that I do this thing in Las Vegas, where we bring in 25 reporters and we have sponsors that underwrite the cost of the thing. So I last year had to do 12 press conferences in the span of four days, 12 totally different subjects, not necessarily related to each other. It's exhausting. So what I have to do is I have to extricate myself, pull myself out of the crowd for a couple hours to recharge, either with my wife or just alone, and then I'm good, right. And so I think for introverts they say that it's really draining to be engaged with people that way. But if you can build into your day a way that you can get recharged, it can be done, and I quite enjoy it. So I love that people are shocked that I'm introvert, but I'll hold to that notion, all right.

Paul:

Well, I want to take it back a little bit. Can you just give people a let's call it a 60, maybe 90 second overview of what exactly is your profession Like? What are the key pillars to what they want to? Just was describing this event that we do in Las Vegas at a trade show called CES Consumer Electronics.

Scott Fosgard:

Show. So, in that I fly 25 reporters from most of the United States, but a number from Germany, into four mansions that I rent, and then I go to a number of companies to pay for that, to amortize that cost across those companies. So I'm raising money, I'm recruiting reporters and then I'm executing these press events where they tell their story. And what's fascinating about it is in the old days I was at a company called General Motors GM and I spent half a million dollars doing what I can do for $20,000 today. How is that?

Scott Fosgard:

Well, we would fly all those people in, put them up at the most expensive hotel in Vegas, keep them for a week and then, in large corporations, typically, if the king shows up, then all of the princes and queens and princesses have to show up, that's the vice presidents of that company. It's an internal army, right, and so the cost goes way up. And so for a lot of companies, what they're learning is, rather than doing the press conference in a massive hall, why not meet the reporters where they live, right, the house of journalists is what we call it. So they come to the house and they mix with the reporters much like a family might do around the Thanksgiving dinner table. That's my analogy, so that's not always the typical day that I do, but it's the most interesting part of what.

Paul:

I do, I guess. Just to take it back to its fundamental core, which is you're kind of an intermediary or middleman that is connecting reporters to stories that you believe that they might find interesting, is that a simplified way of saying?

Scott Fosgard:

if you think of a, of a three-ring circus and the mc, you know the. Uh, I am the orchestrator of all of this right for both the journalists and the clients, those sponsors. So I will frame up what I think. The news is in 30 seconds at the start of each press conference, and that's really important because sometimes my clients struggle to explain what it is they do in simple terms. I've become expert at making complex things simple and so I do that. They present and then the reporters ask questions. I then stand up there and field the questions, so I'm directing who gets to ask the question, who gets answered. After a while I cut it off because it's pretty obvious that we've exhausted the topic or I really don't want to get a question anymore in that space. That's a typical day for me.

Paul:

So you're having to make these judgment calls of okay, I know 25 reporters. I have an idea of what each one of them likes to write about or their interests, and then, on the other side of the equation, with the people that want their news out, you have an idea of which reporters would best suit the news that they want told.

Scott Fosgard:

Is there a way that it can make every one of the 25 reporters care about that company and write about it. That's even a bigger challenge so often. Here's another big lesson that I've learned is so many people come at this from a marketing perspective. So often. Here's another big lesson that I've learned is so many people come at this from a marketing perspective. So they think, well, I paid so much money, I've got to extract so much coverage from these reporters. Well, let's just give them the message that I put in my advertising. Let's just repeat the mantras that the company tells all its employees that will never, ever, ever work because it's not newsworthy.

Scott Fosgard:

So here's the trick is I look at what is newsworthy and then I take what the company does and I package it into the news of the day. So a lot of what I do and I'm trying not to get too technical is making cars that either don't crash or don't pollute, or trucks, for that matter, right To varying degrees. So we know that the world's going to be continually interested in getting to a future where we don't pollute, and we call that carbon neutrality right. And we know that people are increasingly want to be connected in every part of their life, whether they're in their office, in their car, driving in between things. They want to be connected, so these mega trends will always be newsworthy. So then it's a question of how do I take what the company does and package it. Think of it like a packaging engineer I'm packaging the story so that it's compelling to all 25 reporters.

Paul:

And it's easily digestible, right? Because you could talk to maybe an engineer at one of these car companies and they start getting real technical with jargon that makes your head spin, and then you've got to distill that down into something someone like me could understand. I try, I try really hard. Okay, taking a step back and looking at your history, I believe you went to college and then I think your goal was to become a news reporter, or that was at least your first job. And then so maybe just talk a little bit about what young I can't call it teenage or 20-something-year-old Scott Fosgard saw for himself career-wise, and how you kind of pivoted over to what you're doing now?

Scott Fosgard:

Well, Paul, like a lot of us, I realized my sports career ended at age 10. So I wanted to be a major league baseball player, and it was pretty evident by then that I wasn't going to be that. I love sports, as you know, and I wanted to be a sports reporter specifically sports. And when I was in high school I wrote for the school newspaper. I was the sports editor, and then I made a trip with a number of my classmates to a school here in Michigan, Central Michigan University, which is really known for its journalism.

Paul:

Fire Up Chips, right? Is that Chip Lewis Fire?

Scott Fosgard:

Up Chips, right. And so we saw the college newspaper together as a group, and a number of us committed to going to that school for that reason. So again, I went to Central thinking I was going to be a sports reporter. And when I got into the newspaper I was going to be a sports reporter. And when I got into the newspaper my advisor said Scott, we have a hundred sports reporters but we don't have one single police reporter. So here I'm going to make an adjustment to your career You're going to be the police reporter.

Scott Fosgard:

I didn't want to be the police reporter, but I did the path of least resistance. Yeah, and isn't it funny, paul, because these things shape our lives and then you find yourself doing things you didn't dream of. So I knew this when I went to school. I wanted to be a reporter and there was a part of me crazily. I thought maybe I'm going to be an author, maybe I'm going to write books.

Scott Fosgard:

I studied Chaucer, and I had to study Chaucer in Middle English, so I had to learn a whole new language to study it. It's very sophisticated of you, middle English, so I had to learn a whole new language to study it. It's very sophisticated of you. Oh my gosh. I was in there with a lot of PhDs and school teachers that had to get approval for their advanced degrees and I realized I don't have the attention span to be an excellent writer for that long. So I really like the length of things that I write, which take me about three or four hours to write and people hopefully about three minutes to read, and I like the brevity of it.

Scott Fosgard:

So, going back to my story, so here I am a police reporter at the college newspaper and then they promoted me to be an assistant news editor and in the time that I graduated from college, a long, long time ago, it was an economic recession, so there were no jobs that I knew of in the state of Michigan except for a handful. So I was really worried I wasn't going to get placed and it came down to two small little towns. There was one little town called Greenville, michigan, and there's another town called Ludington, michigan, which is on Lake Michigan and there's a lot of boats and a lot of fun things to do. The Greenville job paid get this $215 a week and the Ludington job paid $190 a week in 1982.

Paul:

Put that in perspective for us.

Scott Fosgard:

What was that?

Paul:

Maybe a McDonald's cheeseburger was what like a dollar maybe.

Scott Fosgard:

I think they were paying McDonald's workers in that day $3 an hour and I was working 80 hours a week Sounds like a good deal.

Scott Fosgard:

So why did I send you to college? I got a raise in those days, a $5 a week raise, and I was so excited. I called home and my dad said that's an insult, Turn it down, Like dad, I need that $5 so I can buy lunch. So that was my early career. I was a struggling reporter and then I was recruited to a bigger newspaper in Michigan, a place called Ypsilanti, which was a 30,000 circulation daily newspaper, and I was there two things I was a police reporter during the week and then on the weekends I was a general assignment reporter, and so I had this crazy schedule and just before I got married I interviewed for my first PR job.

Paul:

Oh, okay, that's a good time.

Scott Fosgard:

The day before my wedding Well, actually two days before my wedding and on Friday morning picture the wedding's a Saturday they call me back and they say Scott, good news, you got the job. But here's the thing you need to accept it today. Wow, we need you to start right away. I said I'm getting married tomorrow, can I just wait? No, no, you got to decide today. So that's the start of my PR career.

Paul:

Well, but just, I guess we're missing a step there, and that is you were a reporter. You're going down this path, not making great money, but enough to get by. What even made you want to apply for that job to begin with? The reporting job, no, no, no, sorry, the going from reporting yeah, it's the PR job, because that's effectively when he jumped right from this path to a completely different one.

Scott Fosgard:

Oh, this is going to be horrible. All right, here we go. So there were two stories that really were unsettling to me. There was a murder in my town and Ypsilanti, for people who are not familiar, is next to Ann Arbor where university of Michigan is. It's a smaller city, it has a lot of crime and in many ways it's like LA or Detroit, right. So it's got a lot of crime issues. And there was a murder in this town and my newspaper had been on a witch hunt after the police department because it was in a study was rated the least efficient police department among 250 cities. So here I'm now coming into the situation where the cops they may like me, but they hate my paper, and so they pulled, which is against the law. They pulled the reports about the murder from the things that they allowed me to look at and fed it to my competitor, the Ann Arbor News Okay, to look at and fed it to my competitor, the Ann Arbor News Okay.

Scott Fosgard:

So here I am now being scooped on a murder in a small little town because the police going back to relationships, even though I was trying to get them to like me, I couldn't overcome what my newspaper was doing. So now I had to go snoop around a really seedy part of town to find out details about this murder and I'm knocking on doors and I'm thinking to myself what am I doing? There was another story and you might have to edit this. I think the editor had a creepy factor in him and I was just a young, innocent lad from Cinco Shores, and so he wanted me to write a story about the underbelly of Ypsilanti at night, and I was to go out and interview hookers and drug dealers. And so I met this woman and she said I won't talk to you unless you pay me money. So I had to pay her to talk to me, and again, the combination of those two things made me feel like maybe this isn't what.

Paul:

I want to do yeah, okay, all right, it's making a lot more sense now, okay. But I mean, you could have went a number of different ways, but you chose to apply for a PR job. So how did you arrive at that decision?

Scott Fosgard:

A little bit of backstory on that. So my business editor from the Ypsilanti Press had gone to this PR agency ahead of me, a guy I really respected. Another good friend of mine, who was a sports reporter at the FC Press, went to another PR agency and I knew from my college days that PR was something that I had a specialty in. I had studied it, I had thought about it as a backup career. So when all these things played out I thought you know what? What's the harm? I'll just do an interview with this agency and I didn't expect to get the job. I just was kind of practicing, learning, and then I apparently made an impression on them and I think I had an in because my editor was there. So and it was Paul. It was interesting because it was all about technology and I didn't know that I liked technology then. So here I am.

Paul:

Well, I think it's interesting. So, basically what I'm hearing, like you said, going back to the relationship piece, where you leveraged your network, you had started a career and right away you used your network to get into a new spot and then that landed you effectively into a career that would take what? The next 20, 30 years where you worked at a number of different car manufacturers. It's going on 40 years, Paul, 40 years. Okay, Well, I was trying to do you a favor.

Speaker 2:

You know, make you a little younger, yeah, and you go to.

Paul:

I mean these, you know you mentioned GM, daimler Chrysler. These are massive organizations. So you went from school to working for your local newspaper, to working for these I don't know a company that's got, I mean you tell me, thousands of employees, right? So you were jumping ahead.

Scott Fosgard:

So I don't think our listeners even know about Chrysler and GM. So let me tell that story. So I went from this first agency to another agency. That was we would use the term captive to Ford. So they were only doing Ford business. They weren't employed by Ford but they were contracted by Ford to do motorsports PR, to do PR around various campaigns, around trucks and women and vehicles and all kinds of things. So that agency really wanted to diversify away from motorsports and they liked that.

Scott Fosgard:

I had this background in technology PR and so I got hired into this agency called Campbell and Company and my vice president was a guy his name was Tom Kowalewski, who had been at a car company called AMC American Motors for people old enough to know that name it's no longer here and so three years go by and he gets recruited to run all of Chrysler PR for all of their products. So that's a big position. He was a vice president and I had made a great impression on him so he was recruiting me hard. So the very first job offer I got my son Corey. Deb was pregnant with Corey.

Scott Fosgard:

I knew that we were going to have a baby and Tom calls and and said I want you to do Chrysler Motorsports PR. Well, what would that mean in terms of travel, tom? He said well, that would mean you'd have to give up 20 weekends a year. You'd always be on the road. And, paul, it was one of those moments in my life where I thought this is my big opportunity to get into what we would call the big three. Right, that's, ford, chrysler, gm. In those days, that meant that I would be set for life. I'd have a job, a high paying job, and I had to say no because I was going to be a young father and I didn't want to do that to my family.

Paul:

Scott, we got to stop. We got to stop here because I feel like this is a decision that many of us face. You know, having to make decisions between being present and available for all the family moments and having to make certain sacrifices to advance your career, maybe with the intention of setting up your family for, like you said, for the future. I feel like this is probably something that a lot of people face and I know at the end of the day it's an easy one for most people, but it still stings a little bit right To have to pass on those things.

Scott Fosgard:

I don't know that it's so easy. I mean, I agonized over that.

Paul:

I find that part fascinating, but yeah.

Speaker 2:

Do you want me to elaborate on that a little bit, if you don't mind.

Paul:

Those are big life decisions and like I said, a lot of people are making them, so I think they could use all the insight they can get.

Scott Fosgard:

Yeah. So I remember getting back to Tom and it agonized me to say Tom, I love the opportunity, thank you for thinking of me, but just because I'm a young expecting father, I can't do that. I just can't do that. I just can't do that. And what is amazing and you know this, paul is he was not going to take no for an answer. So he came back six months later with a job I really wanted that didn't require the travel, and I think he created this job for me. So they created what's called a newsroom inside Chrysler where the PR people assigned to the newsroom were basically floating to the issues of the day. So I might be on one day helping with earnings, another day I might be launching a new assembly plant, another day I might be going into the manufacturing space and helping with stamping or these are sub assemblies of a car. And I loved it, I absolutely loved it, and it meant that I could basically work Monday through Friday from 6 am to 10 pm, but I didn't have to travel.

Paul:

Yeah, and I think again just that we keep coming back to the same place, which is relationships, which is clearly you make an impression on somebody with no intention. I mean, you didn't know this guy was going to offer you a job a year, whatever, however many years after you initially met him. But you planted these seeds and when opportunities come up I guess what I'm saying for those of you out there things will find you. The right thing will find you if you're doing the right thing, if you're having the right conversations, if you're building the right relationships in the right way. It's not like and you are special, scott, so don't get me wrong but like this isn't necessarily a special environment Like people can create those opportunities for themselves if they take that approach.

Scott Fosgard:

It is not unique to me. Let's say that right, and you're right. And so it all comes back to those relationships and it gets better. Because as time goes on, I spent about a decade at Chrysler, loved it, loved it. And the same guy, tom Bukowalski, and his boss, steve Harris, get recruited to leave Chrysler and do the same thing for Chrysler at GM, to do for GM what we did for Chrysler. So now he's after me to go to GM and now it's at a director level, which meant a lot of more pay and more perks.

Scott Fosgard:

And I remember even agonizing over that and the guy who really sold me said how many people do you have working for you right now? And he knew the answer Well, it was one. And how many do your German counterparts at Daimler have? Oh, there's 30. And how much budget do they have? It's well, over $30 million. And what do you have? $300,000. And yet that was described as the merger of equals. So he said I'm going to give you 30 people to manage a budget of 5 million. What time do you go home, he said. I said I don't get out of here until 10 o'clock at night. He says I will get you home by 6.30 and you will have all this. That's what sold me to going to GM. So that relationship, if you think of it in terms of dividends, it kept giving and giving, and giving.

Paul:

Okay, so let's continue the career. So now you follow over to. I'm sorry you're over at where now?

Scott Fosgard:

So I've left Chrysler now and I've gone to GM.

Paul:

Okay, and now you're managing 30 people on a big budget.

Scott Fosgard:

Yeah, that sounded awfully arrogant.

Paul:

No, no, no, no, no. It's important we're showing progression of career.

Scott Fosgard:

So what was even better about it is what did I get to do? Right? So I was supporting the vice president of research and development and the vice president of design and the vice president of engineering. So it basically meant I worked for the guys who were trying to reinvent GM around cars that didn't crash and cars that didn't pollute to varying degrees and from a design perspective, hopefully they looked attractive, like, hopefully they were compelling. It's the stuff I've loved for the last 40 years to talk about, right. But the building blocks of that and this gentleman his name's Larry Burns especially.

Scott Fosgard:

I was so fortunate to work for him because he taught me how to think about these things in ways I'd never heard before and I don't want to bore your audience, but this might be interesting. So he would think well, what are the societal issues that limit GM's growth? Well, it's cars, right now, that pollute. It's cars that are not affordable. It's cars that consume precious oil and can we get to renewables? Right. It's cars that add to congestion right, it's crashes and deaths and fatalities Right. So if you could address things like safety, affordability, energy, environment and affordability, you've just solved all the things that reporters care about. Everything that I have done since comes back to that fundamental understanding of the industry and this continuum. We're on to getting to those things and that's how you package news that is relevant versus oh, my company makes the Corvette and we just added 25% more horsepower. Do you want to write about us?

Paul:

Right Makes sense, okay. And so I went on your website and I said, okay, what are all the other things that PR entails? So I'm going to mention a few of them Media relations, trade shows, content, speaking opportunities, media training, reputation management and much more. So, scott, I could use some help with reputation management, so tell me a little bit about that component of the job.

Scott Fosgard:

So that's a specific aspect of public relations, where you're coaching companies about how to improve their reputation, again with the public, right. So if you think about companies who struggle with employees who are maybe not motivated, or you think about companies that need to raise billions of dollars with investors, right. So, based on a reputation that maybe up to now isn't so shiny, right. And how do you gain? It's a little bit like what we do personally right? How do you gain a trust for a corporation that they do what they say they're going to do and that they're accountable and reliable, and so that's an aspect of what we do.

Paul:

The last big piece I want to touch on is I think a lot of people love the concept or idea of being an entrepreneur. I can tell you from personal experience. I went to Cal State, Fullerton. I got a degree in business administration with a concentration in entrepreneurship, and, being a young 20-something-year-old, I had the ego to think okay, I'm going to graduate, I'm going to start my first business and we're going to be off to the races. And it was going to be that easy. Fast forward, 15 plus years later that's not the case. But I found other means for satisfying my entrepreneurial itch, so to speak.

Paul:

I find one thing I find fascinating about your career is you spent decades at these massive car manufacturer organizations. You built these relationships, but you were always a W-2, or I think you were mostly always a W-2 employee. You had a paycheck that you could rely on for you and your family every two weeks. That was guaranteed, it was safe and it was a good place to be. And then fast forward to today. You're no longer a W-2 employee. You own Scott Fosgard Consulting or, I'm sorry, you know, Scott, you own your own company. For those that are maybe a W2 and maybe one day have this aspiration to be an entrepreneur. Can you talk about how you leveraged the skill sets that you built skill sets and relationship that you've built over time to now catapult yourself into the entrepreneurial space?

Scott Fosgard:

It was out of necessity, paul, you remember I think you maybe saw me in that space, so I never wanted to be an entrepreneur, which probably is going to take the air out of the balloon for people who are like what, why would I listen to this guy? So it's fascinating. I lost my job At this point. I was at a supplier company called Delphi.

Scott Fosgard:

I was 57 years old at the time that I lost my job and I remember a good friend of mine from the Wall Street Journal, a guy by the name of Tim Higgins, recommended me to go to Waymo, which, for people who don't know, is the arm of Google that is working on autonomous vehicles. Right? Only problem was is that job was in Mountain View, california, and my family and I live in a little town just north of Detroit, michigan, and we have a son with special needs who lives on a farm and has care around the clock. So it was really problematic to think about taking that kind of job, and I went for two rounds of interviews, paul, I wore a suit through Waymo. Oh yeah, if people are old enough to remember, I think it was called the internship with Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn. Oh yeah, I remember that one, that was me. I was so out of place, I was-.

Paul:

Like guys wearing backwards caps and sneakers or what.

Scott Fosgard:

And like not even dress, shoes and not even a collar on their shirt and nobody was over 30 that I remember meeting and I felt very out of place. But they brought me back because they put a lot of value in these relationships I had built up and the fact that the Wall Street Journal was recommending me but I didn't get the job and that was devastating. And I had lunch with a good friend of mine that had worked for me at GM and he said Scott, get this. No corporation today is looking to hire a 57-year-old white male. Just get it out of your head.

Paul:

Don't tell the HR department that that's a big no-no. But yeah, that's the reality. I get you.

Scott Fosgard:

That is the reality and don't let anybody tell you otherwise. So, out of necessity, I had to do something. He said you need to start your own agency. Okay, you know, I'm a man of faith and I prayed and wrestled over it and there is a story in the Bible about Job who goes through a lot of loss, and that was something that was on my mind. And two days after, in effect, giving it over to God, I got a call from a guy who I knew at Delphi. He happened to be Israeli and it was in February of 2018. I'll never forget. And he says Scott, I'm going to go to Israel and I'm going to come back with four clients. Do you want some?

Paul:

Gee.

Scott Fosgard:

So that Paul was. I don't know. Maybe my experience up to now prepared me well for what I'm doing, because this is what I know and this is coming from supporting a lot of powerful people with thousands of people reporting to them. You know what they need is somebody who doesn't BS them. You know what they need is someone that they can trust, who actually gives them good counsel not what they want to hear, but good counsel.

Paul:

I mean, I can appreciate it was out of necessity. That's interesting, right. That seems to be the case for a lot of people, just like, hey, I got to roll with the punches and move on to the next thing. And again, what I'm hearing there, though, is you had a relationship with a guy. I mean, I don't know where you built that relationship somewhere along this decades long career path, that bared fruit. He knew something you were up to, and like things just kind of. None of this was by coincidence, really. It was years and years and years of you getting to a position where this could be possible.

Scott Fosgard:

Do you know what it all comes back to? It's that cabana in Florida and I'm 13 years old and my dad taught me how to build relationships and it's the core of my whole story. And and here's the other thing that I think is interesting, Uh, and maybe for your audience, this is more of a obvious thing to them why wouldn't somebody do this is look at me, I thought I was going to spend. I did. I thought my entire career was going to be as a reporter somewhere, Right. And then I thought, well, if I get to Chrysler, I'm going to retire from Chrysler. And then I got to GM and I thought I'm going to retire from GM.

Paul:

Yeah.

Scott Fosgard:

I got to Waymo and I'm like if I do retire from Waymo, I will be the first person ever to retire from Waymo, because no one's even close to retirement age and now I've got a team to tackle the things we do.

Scott Fosgard:

They're also independent business people who have their own clients, but they all are gravitating to this kind of collaborative approach to how we do these House of Journalists events and it's so strange, paul, I carry this burden about providing a living for them way more than my own. I didn't anticipate that. It definitely weighs on my mind as we go through economic downturn right now and you lose clients and you feel for people right. So you're very mindful of how I can make a good impression on clients and make a great living for them as well or I can blow it, depending on what I do.

Paul:

So let's recap here so you're a genuine, honest, knowledgeable person that is really good at building relationships and that has led to 40 years of successful careers. Did I sum that up? All right? Do you want to add anything to that?

Scott Fosgard:

Yeah Well, and the other thing I hope people take away is I got to do some really interesting things. I've traveled all around the world talking to people about this transformation, of what's going to happen to the auto industry and to transportation. I have reporters who are in their 70s who aren't retiring because it's more interesting now than when I met them. People say when are you going to retire? And I'm like I don't know that I ever will, because I love. I don't know how many people love what they do. I love what I do. It's all you can ask for.

Paul:

I talk to people everywhere I go, and he learned it all when he was 13. Thanks guys. Thanks, paul. Appreciate it. It was a lot of fun. Thank you for the opportunity. Yeah, had a great time.

Scott Fosgard:

Hats off to you. Look at, you can edit this out, but look at what you're doing, right? This podcast is an extension of maybe what I learned is that you know you're dabbling in this and that and you're getting to do lots of different things and doing it quite well.

Paul:

Yeah, appreciate that. All right. We'll see you next time, all right, thank you. Thank you, the.

Speaker 2:

Rockies ain't too far from here. If we drive all night the cold, that will do you well in the mountain morning light. So let's ride, let's ride on through the rain. Come on and take me anywhere that you wanna be. Let's ride and let's ride. Let's follow the skyline and when we make it to the other side We'll find all the bluest skies. Guys,