What If Your Biggest Setback Is The Setup (Sean McMann)

A Stanley Kubrick phone call. A military rulebook. A split-second turning point that never turns into the movie role you dreamed about. Sean McMann's life is full of those moments, and he tells them with the kind of detail that makes you feel like you’re standing at the payphone with a bag of quarters, hoping London picks up. We go back to Lansing, Michigan, where he grows up in a loud, tight home, learns toughness early, and later realizes how his childhood injuries quietly triggered his dad’s Korean War memories. 

From there, the story accelerates: a near-fatal PCP overdose at 17 becomes the hard reset that drives discipline, faith, weight training, and a new identity. John connects that personal rebuild to everything that follows: Air Force basic training, tech school, and the shocking news that Kubrick’s team wants him for Full Metal Jacket. He can’t leave, but the detour becomes its own career, from AFRTS broadcasting in Tokyo to cross-service leadership, TV production, and a marriage forged through distance, deadlines, and a move from Japan’s financial grind to a life-changing assignment in Crete, Greece. 

We also dig into the veteran transition to civilian work, culture shock at CNN, early internet video startups, raising capital, getting fired from the company he founded, and clawing back through grit and belief. Finally, we connect the dots to enterprise video platforms, Fortune 500 communication, and the pandemic flashpoint that made video a business necessity. If you’re navigating military transition, career reinvention, entrepreneurship, or a season that feels uncertain, this conversation offers real lessons and real hope. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs it, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway.

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Date, Guest, And Old Friends

SPEAKER_00 0:33

Today is Friday, August 21st, 2026. We're talking with John McMahon who served in the United States Air Force. So good afternoon, John. Good afternoon, Bill. How are you? Thanks for taking time out to sit and tell us your story.

SPEAKER_01 0:49

Oh, it's it's my pleasure. Um my pleasure. Let's go. I'm interested. So full disclosure inspire me to remember some stuff I've already forgotten.

SPEAKER_00 0:59

That's right. That's right. So full disclosure though, Sean and I have known each other since sixth grade at Foster Street Elementary. So uh this is not an unknown uh interview here. Yeah, there's some memories of our childhood that probably are better left out, but uh it was awesome. That's true. So we'll just jump right

Born On Christmas In Lansing

SPEAKER_00 1:22

in. Um, when and where were you born?

SPEAKER_01 1:25

I was born on Christmas morning 1964 uh in Sparrow Hospital uh in Lansing, Michigan. All right. And uh the greatest story I remember about my birth is not related to me. It's the fact that my mother, after giving birth to me, went home and made Christmas dinner for the rest of the family.

SPEAKER_02 1:50

They were about right.

SPEAKER_01 1:52

They were a different breed back then. Sounds about right.

SPEAKER_00 1:56

Yeah, so you grew up in Lansing then.

SPEAKER_01 1:59

I did. And my most vivid memory is me with a coal shovel in my hand and mounds of snow everywhere I could see. You remember shoveling snow? Of course you do. You're you're still around there. You're yeah, still doing it.

SPEAKER_00 2:15

Yeah, I'm I'm I'm smart enough to have purchased a place where I don't shovel snow anymore.

SPEAKER_01 2:21

That's that's all I did. It seems like it's it's the only memory I really have that stands out from my childhood is uh is the constant battle with the snow.

SPEAKER_00 2:32

Well, and you lived over on Mifflin Street for quite a while. I just I drove by your old house today. The Mifflin Street house? Yeah. All 600 square feet of it. That was a big place. Seven people packed inside. Yeah, so so let's talk about that. Um, how many brothers and sisters did you have?

SPEAKER_01 2:53

Or sisters, no brothers, unfortunately. I always wanted a big brother. I'm probably lucky I didn't have a big brother because I was a handful. Um, only boy. So uh dad thought it was his job to be tougher on me because he didn't want the girls to think that I was getting preferential treatment because I was the only boy. So a little rough. And uh the memory I have about my sisters is they used to uh the reason I am so ticklish today, and I hate being tickled, is because my sisters would pin me down uh and tickle me until I cried. So this is uh I mean I have to warn like nurses if I go to the hospital, like don't touch my leg without me knowing it, because I will react in a violent manner and I don't want you to get hurt.

SPEAKER_00 3:44

I'm super, super ticklish. Yeah. So it's interesting, like some some like Vietnam vets like if loud noises or whatever, but you grew up in a house where tickling was torture, so it's really the same reaction, you know, honestly.

SPEAKER_01 4:01

Yeah, it was uh, you know, the I was not uh I was a handful as a as a young boy. I was uh very accident prone. Uh so I was constantly going to the hospital, get stitched up for whatever dumb uh injury I created for myself, and I felt bad about that. You know, my dad was a medic in the Korean War. And uh I didn't realize until I was an adult, and he and I had a chance to talk about it, but um, he basically told me that me being so accident-prone was not good for him because it triggered him, and he had, of course, some pretty serious um feelings that came back flooding into him every time I was in Garband, he was patching me up. So as a little kid, you have no concept of that, but I wish that I could take it back and be a better child and not get hurt so much because looking back, it really did affect my father in a negative way for sure. He was the one that always had to patch me up to take me to the hospital.

SPEAKER_00 5:12

Yeah. Now, where did where were you in the in the lineup there in the pecking order?

SPEAKER_01 5:19

Uh middle, lower middle. Um, I had uh older sister Dawn. She just recently passed away. I have uh older sister Bethane, she lives in Maryland. She was in the military, she retired from the military, um, I believe as a senior chief in the Navy. And then uh Shelly lives still uh around the Lansing area. Charlotte, I believe, is where she lives in Michigan, and um Aaron, who still lives in Holt, Michigan, uh, is my younger sister. So kind of in the middle. I was the uh peacemaker, it was a very contentious family, you know, with seven people gathered around the dinner table. It was like uh chaos. And um

Sisters, Survival, And A Tough Dad

SPEAKER_01 6:09

I was a bit of a comedian. I I always made everybody laugh and choke on their food, and my dad thought that was hilarious. And um it's amazing to me now to look back and and what I I often wonder how they did it because you know my parent my parents didn't come from much means. Uh you know this about Mifflin Street. It it ain't the most uh uh uh upscale neighborhood in in that area. Right. Uh we were barely getting by. My mother always had more more than one job, and she always had a home business to try and scrape some extra money together. And my dad was uh, you know, he was a blue-collar guy um who constantly worked overtime. Um didn't see him much, but uh I did even back then appreciate how hard he was working. And I often wondered how how do you guys even do this? How do you keep us afloat like this? Because you know, they didn't make very much at all with that many mouths to feed. And uh I just don't know how they did it. I I'm not sure I would have that ability today to have five kids.

SPEAKER_00 7:23

Uh just can't imagine. No, a lot of work. Did you guys did you feel like you wanted for anything though as a kid?

SPEAKER_01 7:34

Um no. I I wanted to not get beat up so much. Um you know, it was a rough and tumble world. It was the middle of uh segregation. There was a lot of uh changes. There were always people coming and going. We never had like a settled neighborhood, it was always new people clashing with each other. Um, no, I didn't want for much. I I was a pretty simple kid. As long as I was clothed and fed, I I was grateful. Um that's an interesting question. Did I want for anything? You know, more time with my father, that would have been cool. Yeah. Uh less contentious uh relationship with my sisters, that would have been cool. But such is life.

SPEAKER_00 8:26

Right, right. Well,

School Struggles And Finding Trades

SPEAKER_00 8:28

talk to me about school. I mean, I remember Foster Street Elementary, but I got there kind of late in the game. I got there after everyone kind of knew everyone, but uh yeah, so talk to me. What was school like for you?

SPEAKER_01 8:40

I was a terrible student, uh completely disinterested in school. Uh I just thought it was boring, and I spent most of my time daydreaming and staring out the window. Um I loved uh, you know, recess was my favorite thing in the day, uh elementary school. Uh it's funny, I I got a Facebook ping just this week. Someone's trying to put together a reunion of foster elementary students. Like, hadn't heard of that before. We'll see if that happens, and I'm not sure I wouldn't really recognize anyone since I left there in 1976, I think. Um uh and that continued throughout school until I graduated out until my senior year, I really um just skipped through school without achieving much of anything. I mean, I I would make the minimum grade possible just to get out of that class and into the next one.

SPEAKER_02 9:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:50

Um, and looking back, I think that's unfortunate because as an adult, I uh acquired a real thirst for learning of all kind of anything. Like I'm so curious uh and love to learn today, but didn't really develop that appreciation until I started paying for my own my own college classes while I was overseas in the military.

SPEAKER_00 10:18

Yeah. Um I think you have to be you have to be ready to learn, right? Like some people just aren't gonna do it on everyone else's timeline. And then some people are never gonna do it because it's just not their thing.

SPEAKER_01 10:32

Yeah, I was just uh distracted. Today they might call me ADD. Oh, I don't know. Um, I just was totally disinterested in whatever the teacher was saying for years.

SPEAKER_00 10:44

Were there any classes or activities that you did like? Like was there anything that stuck out like when you think about school that you think, oh, that was something I enjoyed.

SPEAKER_01 10:53

Not until I got to junior high school, where where it was uh commonplace back then. Um I don't know if it is today, but you'll remember that we had to take elective classes and we had to learn trades. And I loved to fix stuff. So wood shop, electricity, metal shop, auto shop. Yeah, I loved those classes because I could see an outcome as a result of my learning, like that was tangible. Right. I think that's why I liked them so much. Like I could see how I could apply what I just learned and and I could actually visualize the outcome and then fix the thing and then go, yeah, I fixed the thing, it worked. Um, there's a lot of satisfaction in those kinds

The Counselor Wake Up Call

SPEAKER_01 11:44

of things. As far as book stuff, never really paid attention until my counselor, Mr. I thought Jimenez, set me down. He sat me down in my when I was 17, I was in the 11th grade, and he sat me down with a very sober look on his face and said, um, listen you don't pay attention, but you gotta pay attention. This is serious. And I'm like, what are you talking about? He said, uh, you see all your friends here, they're not gonna be here next year. They're gonna graduate. If you don't knuckle down in the senior year here, while they're all having half days and going on their work study stuff and just basically taking it easy because they took care of all of their their grades, you're in a hole that you have to dig out of. So you literally have to get A's and B's on everything for this entire senior year. You don't get to play. Or I will see you next year and you can do it again. And it was really a slap to my he woke me up and I went, oh my god. So I immersed myself in I I forced myself to pay attention and really listen and really study for the first time in my life. Um, and in particular, I uncovered that I was uh a pretty good writer, um, and an English literature teacher changed my life. Uh at the end of the senior year, when we had our final exams, and I had spent weeks of nights, as you probably did, at the uh library at Michigan State University researching and writing, and I had to create a term paper in English literature, and it was the last big hurdle to me graduating. Um, and I don't remember this teacher's name, but he changed my life. Uh on the last day, uh he everybody left, he dismissed the class, and he said, I want you to stay put, Mr. McMahon. And I'm like, oh shit. Here it comes. I'm coming back here next year. And he sat in his chair in front of me and he had this paper in his hands, and he put it down and it had an A plus on it. It was my term paper. He said, Where have you been? And I said, sir, because where have you been? You are a talented writer. Don't stop. And it might have been the first time anyone who was an adult told me something like that, like they believed in me. And it swelled my chest, and I remember the feeling of walking away from that school on that day, just feeling like, wow, you dug yourself out of a hole, and now you know that you might actually have a talent that might be useful after you're out of here. Um, that was an incredible moment. I don't understand why, and I can't remember his name. I have his picture in my mind, but can't remember his name. He was an English literature teacher that literally changed my life because later on I went into journalism and broadcasting and all these other things.

SPEAKER_00 15:20

Yeah. That wasn't Mr. Spagnolo, was it? Because I remember Mr. Hahn and Mr. Spagnolo, but I don't remember anybody else.

SPEAKER_01 15:30

You might be right, but I'm gotta be honest, it's not ringing a bell. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:35

Um, seems like it should have. Yeah. Absolutely. So you were um, you know, I only know this because I know you, but um through your lack of discipline in high school, though, you were pretty disciplined about your body and and what you put into it and and working out and all those things. So you did have, like you had it, you had the discipline to do the things that you felt mattered, it seems like.

SPEAKER_01 16:03

Well, it's funny. You didn't, I don't know if you know the backstory, you might remember

The Overdose That Changed Everything

SPEAKER_01 16:08

this. I I think we were friends at the time, but I may have been hanging with a different crowd. Um, when I was 17, I overdosed on angel dust uh because I had stolen some dope from my sister's boyfriend, and uh that dope was laced with angel dust, PCP. So uh I was rushed to the hospital, um, strapped down. I became incredibly violent. Um, I hurt some nurses uh and passed out. Um, they couldn't give me any sedatives because they didn't know what was in my bloodstream, and uh I remember the beeping of the heart monitor was going off so fast I couldn't tell one beep from the other. Um it was an excruciatingly painful experience that that saved my life because a couple of days later I woke up on the couch, my father was there, and my father was a really tough guy. You're you can remember my dad.

SPEAKER_00 17:11

Oh, yeah, I remember. He scared the hell out of me.

SPEAKER_01 17:13

Yeah, he scared the hell out of everybody. He he was uh he was a force to be reckoned with. Um, not the most emotionally comforting guy, but um he had rules, and you better stick to those rules. And of course, I violated every one of them. And usually that would end up with him disciplining me in a way that most people didn't have to deal with. But um this morning he uh flipped his paper down, but noticed that I was awake, folded it up, came over, sat on the couch, and took me by my hand and looked me in the eyes and said, I love you. You're the most important thing in my life right now. Please, please don't do this anymore. And I was like godsmacked because my father was not that guy at all. He was hard. And um I had said a prayer for the first time in my life when I was having that overdose. I was looking in the mirror before I told my parents I was having an overdose, and uh I didn't know how to pray. I had never I didn't have any religion in my life back then, but I I felt like I was gonna die for sure. And I asked God to save my life, and I said that if you let me live through this, I'm gonna become a different person. I'm gonna get clean physically, I'm gonna strive for better, I'm gonna try and be a good person instead of a liability. I I'm gonna stop causing my parents all of this havoc. Um, and I kept my promise. So right after that overdose, I started lifting weights. Um, you you probably remember I was a pretty skinny dude when that saga began. I joined the weightlifting team. I got laughed at because I was so bone. I was so bony you could see my ribs through my chest. Oh, yeah. I remember I remember when I started this, I was uh 5'11 and a half and I weighed 117 pounds. And um, I have a one photo of me where I had taken four or five new notches out of my belt just so my genes would stay up. I looked like a concentration camp victim. Um, I got a job at a health food store part-time. I I diligently started working out, and I put a graph paper behind my door in my bedroom, and it was a year of days. And I put my goal at the end of that year was to weigh 160 pounds. And I started at 111 and I said, I'm gonna gain 50 pounds of muscle. It's gonna take a whole year, but I don't care as long as I'm moving the notch every day. A little bit, a little bit, a little bit. Every time I weighed myself, I would mark on the thing what my weight was and what the date was, and did that every day. And at the end of a year, sure enough, I opened the door and I gained 50 pounds of muscle. So then I became the captain of the weightlifting team, uh, weightlifting club, I guess you could call it. I was highly respected. I won the respect of my peers. Um, that struggle was real because for the first month I was in agony. It was so different from my body. I had never done anything like that. Um, but then I got to the point where it was no longer tough and not even a struggle, it was something I longed to do. Like I counted the minutes in school until the bell rang so I could go to the weight room. Um, nutrition got smart about that, started taking all these supplements and stuff, and uh yeah, but the impetus of my becoming a fitness kind of focused person was my near death by overdose.

SPEAKER_00 21:17

Yeah, in all the years I've known you, I did not know that. You didn't? No, so so we you and I like we went to grade school together, but we didn't really pick up again until high school. And it was it was in between yeah, it was in between there where this you wouldn't have liked me.

SPEAKER_01 21:37

I was I was hanging out with the wrong crowd, I was skipping school, I was smoking dope, and just just I don't know what happened to me. I think I was angry at my father and I was trying to get his attention or some silly thing like that. But um, it didn't last long, thank God, and thank god that thank god that happened to me. Because if it hadn't have happened to me, I would never have wound up living the life that I've lived.

SPEAKER_00 22:08

Yeah, we probably wouldn't be having this conversation right now. No, I no, I would have been a casualty, I'm sure, but yeah, everything happens for a reason. So you um you made it through high school by the skin of your teeth, as they would say, it sounds like. And um so you joined the Air Force, it was a little while after high school, though. So what what happens after high school?

Theater Dreams And Joining The Air Force

SPEAKER_01 22:36

So in high school, I fell in love with uh theater and acting. Um and you'll you you'll recall because you were in my first play with me, uh Fiddler on the Roof. And that was in the that was in my junior year, and then in senior year, I was the lead in uh Bye Bye Birdie, which is a big musical production. And I was going to acting classes uh at night uh at a school nearby, and I was auditioning for like local films and stuff, and I was I was winning all the auditions, like I couldn't lose an audition. Um I fell in love with it, and so right about that time, I'm 18 at this time. We graduated, and I joined the Air Force on a delayed enlistment, which meant that I had to hang out and be a nobody for a year before I could go into the Air Force. Well, what am I gonna do with this year? Well, I wasn't gonna start anything ambitious because why? I have to walk away in a year anyway. And I was sitting home one day reading the paper, and I read an article about Stanley Krug Kubrick was gonna do a film called um Full Metal Jacket. And he was asking anybody who thought they wanted to be part of the film to as an actor to send in an audition tape. And I was teaching acting at that time as kind of a fill-in gig, not really serious, but I did it like two nights a week. But I had access to a camera and I had access to a room, and uh I went to this modeling and acting school and I rounded up all of the house plants and stuff that they had around. I made a jungle. I borrowed some fatigues from John Harris. You remember him. Oh yeah. I remember this video. He he he painted my face up, I think, with that camouflage uh stuff. And uh I rem I remembered a monologue from uh from the book that the movie was made of. It's called The Short Timers. And I did an audition tape all by myself in this room. I bundled it up, sent it off to Stanley Kubrick, um, and kept watching the the entertainment news to see if there was any update. We didn't have the internet back then, it's in a black hole as far as I'm concerned. Well, nothing happens. Um, and so my delayed enlistment comes up, and I'm like, yeah, going in the military. Um now I had chosen a vocation uh of broadcasting in the military, which was the closest thing to being an actor, right? I was gonna be a disc jockey, I was gonna be an on-camera talent, I was gonna write TV commercials and that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_00 25:34

The might they might make a movie called Good Morning Vietnam after you.

SPEAKER_01 25:38

Yeah, so where you were thinking, yeah. That's me on the air.

SPEAKER_00 25:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:47

That's in uh Tokyo, Japan, actually. Um, so I joined the military. The the recruiter, I'll never forget, asked me, he said, uh, now you're probably not gonna get it, but we allow you to make a wish list. Where would you like to be stationed? I said, as far away from here as possible. He goes, Do you mean that? And I said, Yes, I do. And he went over to a globe and he put his finger on Lancy, Michigan, and he spun the globe around and he goes, How about Tokyo, Japan? I said, Sounds awesome. Let's go. Well, lo and behold, I got my first duty station, but I'm moving forward a little bit. I do basic training. Uh, I go to uh tech school.

SPEAKER_00 26:31

So I got a quick, I don't mean to interrupt, but I got a quick question for you.

Basic Training Was Not A Shock

SPEAKER_00 26:35

How do you feel that your childhood and upbringing prepared you for basic training? Like when you got off that bus and the basic training, were there any surprises?

SPEAKER_01 26:49

No. Um no, because my father was basically a DI my whole life. For like 18 years. No, I mean you remember him, even though I do. Oh shit, guy, you don't you don't pull punches with my with my pops.

SPEAKER_00 27:06

I'll I'll say one thing about your dad, though, Sean, and it is that as often as scary as that guy was, like when you looked at his eyes, there was just something there. Oh you know that he cared. Like a lot of guys don't have that look, but he did, I think.

SPEAKER_01 27:25

No, he no, and his anger and his outbursts and his air every everything that was tough about him was because he cared about you. Yeah, he wanted he wanted to protect you, he wanted to protect you from yourself, uh, he wanted to make a point so it stuck, so you didn't get in trouble. You know, all had good motives, right? Yeah, uh the delivery would could have been a little different, but um, no, it's funny you mentioned that because you know when you get off that bus and they have you standing in formation for the first time, you're holding your stupid little bag and they tell you to put it down and pick it back up and put it down and pick it back up. It's four in the morning, everybody's exhausted, it's freezing out, and um, I missed the bag on the pick it back up part one time, and so I just stood there at attention. Well, the CI sees TI they called him up there in the Air Force, same thing, Smokey Bear hat and all that. Um, he sees me from 50 feet away, and he's wearing those taps on his boots, and he jumps off the platform and says, Hold it, everybody. And he's coming down the side, and I'm like, There's no way this guy's gonna pick me. He comes right up to my face and he starts banging me right here on the bridge of the nose with that smoky bear hat-huh with every syllable. His name was Sergeant Moda, and I remember his name because uh he made me hurt. He goes, Do you think I'm scaring song? I said, sir, permission to speak freely. Sure, please do go ahead. He said, sir, you don't hold a candle to my father, honestly. And he laughed. I got lucky. He laughed, said, carry on, and I never had a run in with him again, but no, from an intensity, yeah, like an emotional intensity level. Yeah, uh I was used to that, kind of verbal chaos and stuff like that, and uh and always always having someone upset with my performance. That was commonplace. Um, I was a uh a squad leader, yeah, squad leader in uh basic. So I had real concern. I was always spending a lot of time trying to make sure the squad members didn't F up. And you know, if you took that job seriously, it means you're not going to sleep when everybody else is going to sleep and you're getting up earlier than everyone else. And so there was a lot of uh emotionally, it was a lot, it was draining. I lost, I went in, I went in at 185 pounds and I came out at 160 in six weeks. I mean, I lost a bunch of weight. I barely spent five minutes with any meal during that time. Oh, yeah. Because I always wanted to get ahead of the next problem. Um yeah, but no, uh from a from a volatility standpoint, the DIs were just my dad in a uniform, you know.

SPEAKER_00 30:41

Yeah. Yeah. So it it sounds like things went pretty well for basic training, then. I mean, as well as they can go, right?

SPEAKER_01 30:50

Yeah, they did. Um, Air Force Basic is not as arduous, I don't think, as uh the other services. Um, Air Force Basic is more is mentally draining. A lot of the focus is on um attention to detail and policies and procedures, um, it strict adherence to that kind of stuff. And memorizing all of that stuff is the tough part. Because at the same time, of course, you're marching all day, you're doing the PT in the morning and all that stuff. You've got all these things you have to learn, but um mentally, uh it was it was challenging, but I can't say physically it was it wasn't a cakewalk, but you know what I mean. Yeah, I didn't have to march for 50 miles with 50 pounds on my back and that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_00 31:42

Yeah. Yeah, 65 actually. Um so you get done with basic you get done with basic training and you had to uh is it so it's called tech school in the Air Force?

SPEAKER_01 31:53

Yeah, so I went to an army fort in Indianapolis called Fort Benjamin Harrison. That sounds familiar. Doesn't exist anymore. Um and uh while I was there, uh I that's where I went to train as a

Tech School And The Kubrick Phone Call

SPEAKER_01 32:13

broadcaster. While I was there, um in the middle of the night one night, I get a call from the charger quarters. Uh I'm sorry, he bang on my door. He says, You gotta come to uh the CQ. Your sister's on the phone, and she sounds upset. And I'm like, Oh god, what what is it? Who got hurt? You know, it's really scary.

SPEAKER_02 32:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:41

Uh payphone, right? There's the things hanging on the side, and I walk up and it's dark, and it's my sister, Erin, and she says, Um, I said, What what happened? She goes, I said, uh, is everybody okay? She goes, Yeah, everybody's okay. But this guy keeps calling here every night at dinner time, and mom keeps telling him, You're in the military, you're not interested. And I picked up the phone and listened in the last time, and it's Stanley Kubrick, and he wants you in this movie. And I said, Why didn't you call me the first time he called? Like and my mind is racing, and so I go, Did he leave a number? She said, No, but he said he's in London. Okay. So I can't stop thinking about this. And I'm I'm just in tech school. I've only been in the Air Force eight, nine weeks at this point. Uh-huh. So I go basically A-WOL the next day. I leave the school, uh, cause some sort of diversion. I leave the school, I walk across an army base in my bright blue Air Force uniform that sticks out like a sore thumb. I go to the bank and I get a bag full of quarters, and I go to the nearest payphone on the corner, literally on the corner of an intersection. And I start shoveling quarters in. And the ATT operator picks up and I say, I'm trying to call London. And she goes, Okay, put in whatever more money. Uh ATT London, can I help you? Yes, I'm trying to reach Warner Brothers Studios. One moment. And I put in more money, and I'm thinking to myself, this is never gonna work. Warner Brothers Studios, can I help you? Uh, yes, this is Sean McMahon. Stanley Kubrick has been calling me. I'm returning his call. Can you put me through? And she goes, One moment. I'm going. There's no way. Well, I don't talk to Stanley Kubrick. I talk to a guy named Leon Vitaly, who's his personal assistant. And he picks up the phone and he goes, Hello, Sean, you're a hard bugger to get a hold of. And he explains that we really liked your audition tape. And I said, You mean the one I sent more than a year ago? Yeah, well, there were thousands of them. Apparently, it was a record number of post uh post packages being delivered to one re for one reason at the same time.

SPEAKER_02 35:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:26

Um and he goes, Listen, Stanley wants to see you in New York next week. Um, and I said, Well, I'm in the real military now. I'm not I'm pretty sure I can't make it. But and I know they're not gonna let me out of the military just to come to some audition in New York City. Because Sean, no, it's not auditions. We start table reads next week, and you're private joker. And my heart just sunk because I knew I wasn't being gonna be able to get out. But I would have, I have to confess, I would have definitely left the Air Force at that moment. Right. Because that was my that was my dream come true. So I went to my first sergeant the the next day, and I explained what was going on, and in the Air Force manual at that time, there was something like a 120-day out clause or a 110-day out clause, and it basically said, no harm, no foul. If you don't fit with military life, you just come to us and shake hands, and you can go on your way, and we can be better off without you. And I took that clause to him and I said, I did my calculations. If you don't count weekends, I'm well within this window. And he took his glasses off and smiled. He said, Son, there's no weekends in the Air Force. And that was it. He said, You can appeal, but you're not you can appeal or you can go AWOL. In either case, the outcome's not gonna be what you want. So uh I literally had to call Leon Vitality back and say, I hope you find somebody else. Sure, it's gonna be an awesome movie, but I'm moving on. And the cool thing is, right after that, I met my wife. And I wouldn't have met her if I'd have left the base.

SPEAKER_02 37:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:35

Again. Everything happens for a reason, right? I believe it does, but boy, that was that was a hard one to take, man. You know that I was a bit of an attention uh whore back then.

SPEAKER_00 37:48

You know, we won't think we won't name names, but I do recall a time in a certain class that we were in where one of our friends was the victim of your uh exuberant uh acting ability. Uh he reminds me of it often. He's still mad about it, but we won't we won't name names or mention exactly what happened, but he's still mad about it. Anyway, you uh you finished up tech school and then you head off to Japan from there, or did you come home first? How'd that work?

SPEAKER_01 38:19

Did I go home? I yeah, I did go home for a couple of days. Not for a long time. It was December of 85. Yeah, I came home. Uh my girlfriend went home to Charleston to see her family, and then somehow she wound up back to Michigan. I introduced her to my parents. Um, and then she had to finish school. She was like uh the class behind mine.

SPEAKER_00 38:50

So you you met her at tech school, and I'm sorry I'm interrupting you, but you met you actually met at tech school then. I did. Okay. I heard her laugh.

SPEAKER_01 38:59

Uh-huh. I loved her before I saw her. I heard her laugh in the room next to us, and I was with my buddies, heard her laugh, and I looked up at my buddy, uh, my my good friend back then, Bill Hickman was his name. I said, Billy, I could marry a woman with a laugh like that. He said, Well, lucky for you, she doesn't date an enlisted guys. And I said, Yet. And that's the beginning of that story. Yeah, everything happens for a reason. I I agree with that. It doesn't feel good sometimes at the moment, but um in retrospect, yeah, I do agree.

SPEAKER_00 39:45

So did you um so you went to Japan in what have been like December-January of 85-86?

SPEAKER_01 39:55

Yep, early January uh 86.

Tokyo Broadcast Life Across Services

SPEAKER_01 40:00

Um, I took a direct flight from St. Louis to Tokyo, uh, joined the Far East Network, which was at Yokota Air Base. Um and back then, I don't even know if they have it now, but they used to have uh AFRTS, Armed Forces Radio and Television Service, and it was essentially a global, a big global media operation. Um and every major base had a station, a TV station, radio station combined. And uh I went there and I uh started on the radio, and then I graduated to satellite operations, and then I did television production, and then um you move around. It's an interesting organization. I think AFR I think it still exists today. In Europe, it's EBS, in in uh the in Asia, it's the Far East Network. Um, the interesting thing is it's a what they call a purple suit organization. It's literally Army, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, and Navy may be working on the same project in the same room together. So that was a very unique aspect of that life. So I I only reported to the Air Force for a small part of my military tenure. Usually I was reporting to uh Marines, Navy, or Army.

SPEAKER_00 41:41

Did you find that they like sometimes uh didn't know what to not necessarily know what to do with you because you had a job that didn't know how to deal with you're an Air Force guy, like we would we would get people from different services, and sometimes we just didn't know how to deal with them because you know the Army was so different from the Air Force, which was so different from the Marine Corps and so on.

SPEAKER_01 42:02

I think that uh I had it easier in the world of working for the other services because I was a really gung-ho kid with a lot of military bearing. And at that time I was ironclad and bulletproof. I mean, I was tough as nails. I was still training all the time, mentally and physically. I was at my peak. Um, and I was uh a great um troop. Like if you gave me an order, that's all I needed to hear. It was gonna be done the way I said it was gonna be done. If I told you I was gonna do it, I did it. No, no excuses. And I think that translates across services, you know. Uh every boss sizes all these kids up from these different services and determines probably in 15 minutes who's gonna be trouble and who's gonna be who can I rely on. Lucky for me, the um they seemed to think that I did a great job, and uh uh I never had a problem. Uh it was confusing sometimes because the Air Force has specific POCs, policies and stuff, and this those are not the same from service to service. Like how you handle a given situation might be completely different. So, in that respect, it was a bit confusing, but um I think that I flourished because I just uh look, I respected all of my bosses. My bosses were like Vietnam era guys and ladies, and uh they'd been through it a lot, and you could tell you couldn't teach them anything, like all I wanted to do was learn from them. Um, they were uh they had very high standards, and and they expected you to operate at your top and observe a chain of command, and so a lot of the stuff does translate from service to service if you just use your head and you think about it. Um I didn't have a problem with it. A lot of people do it's interesting you asked that question. A lot of people did. A lot of people were so confused that they couldn't even operate, really. But I was I was Pretty good at navigating. I've always believed in a statement from Bruce Lee, even before I joined the military. He's got this interesting perspective. He says, be like water. Like either rise over it, go under it, go around it, but don't stop moving. Don't be paralyzed. Just be like water. Just morph around whatever the given situation is. And uh I kind of applied that principle. I I was expecting constant change, and I was okay with that.

SPEAKER_00 45:31

Yeah. Well, and I think if you have that mindset, it's very helpful, especially in the military, especially overseas. Now, uh, how long were you uh in Japan before your girlfriend came over?

SPEAKER_01 45:46

Uh a couple months. Uh, and a marine uh master sergeant, his name was Kevin

Bringing Catherine To Japan

SPEAKER_01 45:54

Nagel, called me one day and called me on the phone. I was in the radio studio, and he said, I want to see you in my office now. I'm like, oh shit, what did I do? He goes, shut the door, have a seat. So he pardoned me, I'm fiddling with something on my desktop. Um he sits me down and I'm thinking, oh man, I'm in trouble. He goes, uh, does the name Catherine Butler ring a bill with you? I said, Yes, Top, that's my girlfriend. He goes, Well, apparently you wouldn't know it. I just got off the phone with her, and she says you're not answering any of her letters. Oops. He goes, I'm gonna leave the room now. I don't want you to come out of this room until you have finished a letter. I've left you some parchment paper and an envelope there and a stamp. It's very easy. Write down your thoughts, and he goes, and you better apologize prophetically, my friend, or you're in deep shit when she gets here. So yeah, so she came after me, and I was so excited to say, you know, that's rare. Like when we I had to lobby the general uh at Fort Benjamin, the army general. I had to lobby him to change my order. He changed my orders. Uh her orders, I'm sorry. I was already slated to go to Tokyo. She was slated to go to Greece. I wanted her to come with me, and all the Air Force ever told me what this we don't do that for unmarried people. It's non-starter. Right. And I said, Nothing's impossible. What could I do? And the same first sergeant told me, if you're brave enough, you can go find the signature of a general officer. And I said, Does it have to be an Air Force general? He said, No. I said, Don't we have an army general in the base? Or on post or whatever they called it? He goes, Yes, good luck. I can't wait to hear the story. So I sat outside that officer's office for what felt what feels today like weeks every day after school, I would go park there. And his secretary would tell me she'd try to fit me in, she'd try to get me into Visium, and he knows you're here, just very busy and backed up. And finally he let me in his office, and I talked him into changing my wife's orders. And he did it. Uh, using some silly story about he was a tanker, uh, tank commander, and he had all these pictures of him with his tank crews and stuff. And he said, What could what why should I possibly do this? And I said, Um, what happens if there's one member of a tank crew that's just not happy, super unhappy? Does that have a chance of bleeding over to the crew at large? Like, can morale drop just because of one bad apple? And he said, Oh, it can be devastating. And I said, Well, sir, you're about to send two bad apples to two different units, and they're going to have a devastating impact. Or with a stroke of your pen, you can send us both to one unit, and everybody is happy.

SPEAKER_00 49:30

I'm I'm I'm guessing he didn't buy your bullshit, but he appreciated the balls that you had in doing that. You know what?

SPEAKER_01 49:38

I think you're exactly right. He's like, hey, gotta hand it to the kid. You know, uh it was and I was dancing. It's not like I had rehearsed that. Right.

unknown 49:48

Right.

SPEAKER_01 49:49

He signed that thing, and I'll never remember. I'll never forget coming out of his office and looking at my future wife with tears in her eyes, and I said, We're going to Tokyo.

SPEAKER_00 50:00

Okay, so I'm so I'm not letting you off easy. Um, we got to go back and I gotta ask this question. Why weren't you writing to her? What was that all about?

SPEAKER_01 50:12

Well, one of the reasons I was fascinated with Japan was that I had been in martial arts since I was eight years old. Taekwondo, correct? Uh judo. Okay. I I wanted when I was eight years old, my birthday was, I was gonna be eight years old. My birthday was coming up. My dad asked me what I wanted for my birthday. And because I was tired of being beaten up all the time at foster elementary school on the way to and from, um, I had figured out that I had pretty paltry combat skills. I was coming up on the short end of these altercations repetitively. And I said to my dad, I want karate lists. He said, Well, let me talk to the boys at work. You always used to talk everything out with the boys at work, poll his peers and stuff. Came back a couple days later, he goes, uh, now I've done some investigating. We're not gonna do karate. Because I know when you learn karate, you're gonna be running around karate chopping people and you're gonna be causing problems. He goes, but I'm gonna put you into martial art, but it's a defensive martial art that you can't beat people up with. You can just defend yourself. And I'm thinking, I don't care. Anything's an improvement on my given status.

SPEAKER_02 51:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:38

And so he put me in judo, and I kept that up until uh I left. Uh I was at the time I left Lansing, I was an instructor of judo, uh, a teacher of judo at the YMCA. And I wanted to go and I was up for my black belt, and I wanted to get my black belt in Tokyo, Japan. I thought, how cool would that be? Well, it's funny, I got to Tokyo, Japan, and I couldn't find a judo dojo anywhere. It was all karate. Um, even though judo was invented there in Okinawa, I believe. But um uh I forgot your question, I'm not sure I answered it.

SPEAKER_00 52:23

Yeah, so the question was why weren't you writing to your girlfriend during that period of time?

SPEAKER_01 52:29

I was I was leaning into how fascinated I was with Asian culture and the Japanese culture. So I was wandering around like um like a tourist whenever I wasn't working, and just mesmerized trying the food, uh trying the beer, traveling on trains, loved to interact with the locals, trying to learn the language. And I literally just got so immersed in that that I forgot. I don't know. It was a really dumb thing because it almost caused me some problems.

SPEAKER_00 53:06

Yeah, yeah. I'm not I'm not sure that's I'm not sure she wanted to hear, oh, I forgot, but uh, she handed it to me when she got to Japan, I promise you. Oh I'll bet. So so she get to Japan and um how long how long are you two there together?

SPEAKER_01 53:25

From 85 until 88, 7 or 8.

unknown 53:32

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 53:33

Something like that. All right. So you got married in in Japan, right? Is that where you two technically, yes.

SPEAKER_01 53:39

So we had to get married in Japan. Um, we didn't tell our families, by the

Embassy Marriage And A Move To Crete

SPEAKER_01 53:44

way, until 25 years later. Um we were leaving Japan. We we had to get our orders in line to leave Japan and go somewhere else.

SPEAKER_02 53:59

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 54:00

Once again, I made my appeal for us to be stationed together, and once again they said, You're out of your mind. And by the way, we see what you pulled off before that ain't gonna work again. Um uh, you have to be married. I said, Well, by what date? So we had a deadline and we had to get married. So, in a monsoon in the spring of 87, uh, two friends, an army friend and a navy friend, and us hopped in a little car and drove to the US Embassy in downtown Tokyo, and we were married there at a window with a hole in it. How romantic and then we went down the street and got our marriage license, which is entirely in Japanese. Um it's hanging on the wall in my master bedroom still today, and uh yeah, it was very unceremonial, but we had to get married. Um, and because we got married, then we were able to get the same order to what was her first choice, which was the island of Crete in Greece, Iraqlion air station. So talk to me about that. Oh my god, it was night and day difference. In Japan, uh the economy for us was terrible because the yen rate was upside down. The dollar was worth less every month while I was stationed in Japan. We lived off base, we didn't even have cards that allowed us to eat at the chow hall. You know, we lived on the Japanese economy and we paid with American dollars. So honestly, in Japan, my wife and I were destitute. We could barely, I'm not even exaggerating, some nights we didn't know what we were gonna eat for dinner. Uh, if we how do we eat? Which is where my love for cooking began because I would pull everything out of the pantry and take a I could take a bottle of uh you know ketchup, uh some peanut butter and a can of peas and some other thing, and somehow make something edible out of it. So our life in Japan from a from a money standpoint was super tight and and got tighter every month. I remember when the 747 lifted off of the Dakota Airbase's runway, it the the passengers burst into applause because they had all been oppressed financially for years. Like it was not good, it was barely getting by. And you know, the cost of living allowance that the military does was always a month behind.

SPEAKER_00 56:50

Right.

SPEAKER_01 56:51

So it's not they never caught up with it, not during my entire time there. It was kind of very stressful. Well, we land in and the weather was bad, so we we leave there, and then we land on the island of Crete in Greece, and the door opens, and this beautiful sea air blows into the airplane, and I step out on the top of the stairway coming down from the plane, and I I look around, and I used to be in Tokyo, which was blanketed in smog and buildings as far as you could see, and now I'm looking at what looks like you know, in Greek tragedy, it's just these rolling hills and beautiful palm trees and stuff, and and then with my first meal that I bought there, I figure out my dollar is now worth two dollars. The drachma was not doing so great against the uh US dollar. Our whole life changed. I lived off base in Greece. Uh uh uh I paid $300 a month for what would be considered a mansion there today, a walled yard with a big driveway and a gate out front, and my whole life changed overnight. Uh, of course, I gained a bunch of weight because I was spoiled. Um the the work was all the same, it was still the same work. I continued to write and produce TV commercials. Um I won a bunch of awards. I was very diligent, very driven. Um the weather did not suck. Uh the people in Greece are just the finest people. Uh they still love us. My wife and I actually went back there for the first time in 2022, and then we went back again in 2023. But I I have dear friends there. I have a Greek family there. That was my Greek family when I was 23 years old or something. Um, Greece was, we always say that Greece was our compensation for Tokyo.

SPEAKER_00 59:11

Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 59:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 59:14

How long were you in Greece?

SPEAKER_01 59:16

Was there until 1990? And in 1990, we sat down and I said, look, we have to have this conversation. We're either going to be lifers or

Greece Wins And Choosing To Separate

SPEAKER_01 59:27

we're not. And if we're not, this is the last year, this is the time to make that decision. Yeah. Because that that I had to extend for a year to get that Greek assignment, which I gladly did. But I I still had the acting bug. Um I I was uh I organized a theater um guild uh in Greece, and then uh I I took my plays to Europe and we won the we won the European Festival of Plays in '89. Um I won Best Actor. This was in Rammstein, Germany. It was all the different bases from Greece, Germany, London, anywhere in Europe. 25 different bases competed, and I won Best Actor. So and it was all judged by you know, like proper directors from New York and LA and stuff.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:33

And uh I was like, if I'm gonna do this acting thing, then I I need to get out before I get a bunch of wrinkles and stuff. So um she wanted to get out, so we got out in 1990 and moved to Atlanta, Georgia. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:50

Now, in in between all that, did you guys have a proper wedding, proper wedding back home?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:56

We did. Um uh it was uh September of 87. We did. We came home from Tokyo. Um we were going to get married outdoors at a place called, I think it was Magnolia Gardens, which is one of the most beautiful estates that's been there for hundreds of years. Beautifully groomed manicured grounds and all these colorful lineas and stuff, and the ocean is out there, and we had the the white uh chairs and uh like Forrest Gump, that whole setup, exactly like La Marych scene in Forest Gump. It was all set up, it was gonna be fairy tale, and then uh, as you probably know, September is hurricane season in Charleston. And guess what showed up? A hurricane, yeah, and the whole thing was destroyed, and uh the alarm bells went off, and her mother started a phone chain with all of her friends in Charleston, and they all got together and moved the wedding to her mom's church, and all the ladies, because our plant our all the flowers were destroyed and everything, so they brought houseplants to the church and decorated the church with houseplants. And again, you said earlier, everything happens for a reason. That's what we told each other then. That's it, there's a reason behind this. And I think the reason was so that we could see all of these people pull together and make something special for us out of nothing. They had nothing, everything was gone, yeah. And they did.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:49

I think you were overseas at that time. I was, I was in the Mediterranean. I had deployed in June, and I didn't come back till November of '87. So yeah, I missed the whole chindig.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:04

Yeah, well, if that it was awesome because we got married, and um, then I got a phone call at the reception from the limo driver. I had rented a limo who was gonna take my wife and I to a beach house on the beach in Charleston. And he called me and he said, Mr. McMahon, I can't I'm calling to let you know we're not gonna make it with the limo. And I'm like, What are you talking about? You're supposed to be here in an hour. He goes, The limo is underwater on the market street downtown. And it flooded the whole downtown, yeah. And so John and John and a bunch of my wife's friends' husbands, they all got together, pitched in, made a bunch of phone calls, and found we can't get you a limo, but they got me a stretch convertible Lincoln Continental, a white one, yeah. And and we walked out expecting just to get in my father-in-law's car, I guess. And we walked out of the church. Uh people are throwing rice on us, and they pull up in this sweet stretch Lincoln. Super cool, made for better memories.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:22

And, you know, again, those are moments. Uh, you don't you don't you'll never forget a moment like that.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:30

Well, you know, the old saying is if it rains on your wedding day, that's good luck. So whatever the hell happened there, you guys had the best luck on the planet. I must be very good luck today, man, because my wedding were rained out. That's right. That's right. So you guys leave uh Tokyo and you end up in Atlanta. And so um talk me through, like first of all, like what was that transition like? I mean, lucky for you, you were both in the military station in the same place. So it wasn't like you were coming home and and two was taking care of the house or two's

CNN Culture Shock After The Military

SPEAKER_00 1:05:07

coming home and you kind of did all these transitions together, but what was that like for you?

SPEAKER_01 1:05:14

It was a massive culture shift for me. It was uh it was uh actually hard for me to deal with. Um, I told you earlier I was I was pretty done a hoe. I was bursting with military bearing, and I exp I loved the standards in the military. I knew that I can I knew that I could know that things were gonna be the way they were supposed to be. And you get used to in the military knowing that, right? Yeah. There's no half-assed anything, it's it's it's up to a standard that we've all agreed on, always. That's it. And if not, there's a clear path to remediate that problem and get get on down on the road. This doesn't exist in the civilian world, or at least it didn't in Atlanta in 1990.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:04

Um, I went to work for Ted Turner. Um I'm on a busy television set, live TV, which I was used to. We did that every night in Greece. It was a much bigger scale, of course. We're talking about a major network and not some little small affiliate station, but um, I uh I remember thinking one night I was on the overnight shift, I had to start at the bottom, even though I had five years of real-world experience. I had to start at the very bottom doing this three, two, one, you're on. Yeah. And I did that for a year. Um, but I stood there one night just watching what I call what I wouldn't even call controlled chaos. It was just chaos. It was very unnerving to me having come out of a place that was so orderly and so frightened. Formulaic. So planned. Uh you know, in the military, it's more like ready, aim, shoot. Uh, and the land I dropped into, it was more like shoot, aim, pray. So, yeah, it caused a lot of stress for my wife as well. She was used to the same thing. And you were both working for CNN at the time, right? Yep. Yeah. Yeah. CNN was moving from being the chicken noodle network into the first true 24-7 news channel. Um, there was no political stuff going on back then that was just report the news and and do it fast and make sure it doesn't break.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:48

Yeah. And uh the 24-hour news cycle, right? I mean, that's that's their claim to fame. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:57

I had the pleasure of meeting uh Ted Turner, and I used to work in the early mornings later on when I was a video editor for them. Uh, some of the neatest conversations I had was with Ted Turner. He would ride his bike to work in the dark in a suit, and he would always put his right pant leg inside of his sock so he didn't get caught in the chain. He would ride from like some ritzy part of Atlanta, I can't remember, Paces Ferry, I think, and then he would ride down to downtown. Um, and then he would always get in the elevator with me, and I and I was the one that noticed that his leg was his pant leg was still tucked inside of his sock, and I would try to generally remind him of that. You know, you got the you know your um and he would thank me profusely every day. Um pretty eccentric guy, but um not afraid of risk, I'll tell you that. Yeah, he just kept barreling forward. It was an explosive time there, it was super exciting, and and I learned a lot. Uh that's where I basically really honed my broadcasting shops. Now, how long were you at CNN? Seven years. Uh in the seventh year, this is 1997, uh, everybody started

Internet Video Before Bandwidth Existed

SPEAKER_01 1:09:27

talking about this little thing called the internet. And at the same time, I was getting frustrated at uh Turner because um I didn't have the budget to do what I wanted to to make what I wanted, what was in my head, happen on the screen.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:48

And I got blessed by uh bumping into a guy at church who owned a production company who had just gotten a massive contract to produce a documentary film that was exactly something that I would want to produce. It's called the Parenting Principle. And he said, I would like to hire you. I saw your special that you did for CNN last night, and uh so he hired me, and I got this massive budget. Basically, I could do whatever my heart desired. I had cranes and very expensive equipment and car-mounted cameras and special lighting, and I did that for a year. I shot, edited, produced, uh, and then won 14 regional enemy awards for that documentary, which was amazing. So then I was done with video production. I said, There's nothing else I can do. That's the that's I'll never do anything better than that.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:51

Um, and then the internet talk was happening. Um, and then uh uh a guy saw that special that I just talked about. He saw that special on a Saturday night, and then Sunday at church, he pulled up alongside me in the parking lot, and he said, I saw your show last night. Did you produce that thing called um it was called uh perfect people? And that was a Turner program. And I said, Yes, I did, and he goes, I need to talk to you. I need a video guy. And I said, Oh, sh sure. Uh he goes, Can you meet me at the Waffle House tomorrow? So this guy, I find out, is worth 150 million dollars. He just sold the largest uh Toyota dealership in the world, Atlanta Toyota, and he wanted to start an internet company based on video. He goes, but I don't know anything about video. Can you write a business plan for a video internet company? And if you do that, we'll go out and raise a bunch of money, but I'll fund it to begin with because I got a lot of money. So talk about rolling your dice.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:16

So I downloaded a Word template for business plan. I don't have a business degree, I never had a business in my life, but I wrote a business plan and then I subsequently went out and raised $10 million with it. Started a company called Media First. Hired 75 people.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:41

Uh it was it was crazy times back then. Uh no, you were you still in Atlanta at this time? So you're still hanging out down there. And so how long was I mean, so you watched this company go from not even an idea really to fruition. What was that like?

SPEAKER_01 1:13:04

I loved it. I um I love to create, whether we're talking about creating a uh a document or a photo or a video, business ideas are similar. Uh, it is a creative process. Um, and then solving problems is the other thing that I love to do the most, figure shit out, right? And so I thrust myself into a world where I didn't know anything, I had no experience, but I had to win. Like there was no choice. Uh we were successful, we partnered with the biggest companies on the planet. Um, we actually sold our solution to companies. Um, and we were the problem is we were way ahead of the timing is everything in technology businesses, and we were a decade ahead of the right time to do that. Um, because we were talking about internet video in 1999 when you had a dial-up modem, you didn't have the bandwidth. Well, somehow all these smart investors, myself, my team, none of us thought, gee, but no one can actually watch what we do. Right. It's it's amazing. Uh, but it's true, we were 10 years ahead of our time, and that's that's a hard lesson that I learned. And but that's okay because that was the stepping stone to me moving on the other side of the table. Instead of using the technology in my own company, I would sell technology to companies. Right. Video technology.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:56

So how long? So you were just with this this group for uh just a couple of years then? So roughly like 1999. What so what happens? Like you discover, oh, this is great, but we just don't have there's no bandwidth to do what we're trying to do. We're gonna put that on the shelf. So uh so what happens next?

SPEAKER_01 1:15:16

Uh you you uh you you hire your best friend from the Air Force to be your chief technology officer. Your chairman falls in love with him, they become BFFs. Uh your best friend, not your best friend, a close friend. Uh the chairman promotes him to be the CEO, and he sees you as a threat and fires you. Wow. So I was fired from the same company that I founded uh

Getting Fired And Rebuilding In 2001

SPEAKER_01 1:15:51

within two years of doing so.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:53

Yeah. You know, that's not honestly that's not an uncommon thing, though. If you look at some of these businesses today, Papa John's a great one. Like that Papa John doesn't even work there anymore.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:04

Yeah. You know what, dude? Again, I've had a storied life and some really incredible story. Some of my stories, uh, some people tell me they sound literally unbelievable, but I was fired by a guy that I hired, and he I was fired the day that I was that I was scheduled to meet with him to lay out my five-year plan for revenue operations. He goes, I know you think we're here to talk about that, but we're not. And the next words out of my mouth were, you silly bitch. I knew exactly what was going on. So he fired me. He shut the door to his office, he said, Take all the time you need. I looked out the window. It was a building on at 1430 West Peachtree Street in downtown Atlanta. I looked out the window, and across from the window was the cross on the top of the church that I went to with my little kids back then. Literally in my face was a cross from my church. And I immediately said, It's gonna be okay. God's got a plan. I'm not gonna let this bother me. And so it took me six months. You couldn't buy a job in 2001. Right. There were there were no jobs. Like you would go to job boards that were just beginning back then. Nothing. And so I wrote uh letters to the C-suite of all of the companies that I thought I could go work for where I could have an impact, explaining to them that they were selling their solution to the wrong customer for the wrong reasons and measuring their outcomes in the wrong way, and that I can improve everything. And here's exactly what I will do. And uh one of them bit, uh, flew me up to St. Louis. I met for 11 hours with all the C-suite, and they hired me on the spot, which was great because for six months I had been surviving, paying four mortgages and putting my kids through all their sports stuff and all this medical stuff. It was the braces period and all the orthodontic stuff. Uh, we were literally paying all of our bills with our 401k that we had built up in the 90s.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:40

Um, and thank God for that. That's terrifying. Uh, well, I went to work every, I got up every morning, put a tie on back when we used to wear ties. Um, I took my kids to the school bus, which stopped right in front of our house. My children didn't know this happened until they were teenagers. I told my wife, Catherine, they don't need to know about this. Yeah, I don't want them worrying about daddy. I'm going to work every day to find work. That's what I'll be in the basement of my office doing. It's just a different sales job now. I'm selling me now instead of my product. Um, and I did that, and it took six months. It was it was at the end there, man. I was pretty fragile emotionally, but I've always been a big believer in belief. Um, I believe in the law of attraction. Uh, as a man thinketh thinketh, so it shall be. So I choose to believe. Like I've always told uh my kids, I would rather believe I can succeed and be proven wrong than believe I'm gonna fail and be proven right.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:59

Yeah, it's a great lesson, especially for kids.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:04

Yeah, and just and when they heard about that way later in life, yeah, they couldn't believe it. They're like, oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:13

Right, they're probably like, we didn't even know what was happening.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:16

They did, they had no clue.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:18

And I don't think you know what I don't think kids need to know. Like, that's too two in the weeds. They need to be kids, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:20:25

Yeah, a similar thing happened in 2008. Um, very similar thing happened in 2008, and we applied the same protocol. Yeah, it's just another day. We'll get through this like we get through everything. Right. I've always I my wife and I have a beautiful wife, and she's been my partner for 40 years now, and and we have a motto that we adopted when we got married. It's it's you and me against the world. Like you put your back against mine, I'll put my back against yours. Nobody can touch us, at least they're not going to get us by surprise. Right. And uh that understanding um it was very powerful. It's very powerful uh and very helpful when you're facing periods of life that are full of doubt and worry. When you buttress it with that sort of um belief, uh makes it much easier. But hey, let's be honest, the military probably had a lot to do with how I dealt with challenges in my life. I mean, the military doesn't take excuses. You don't get a you don't get a do-over.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:43

You don't get you don't get a pass when things go wrong, that's for sure. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:47

Well, I figure out that if uh if I always do what I've always done, I'll always get what I've always gotten. You know, Einstein, I think it was Einstein that said uh insane, the definition of insanity is uh repeating the same thing and expecting a different outcome. Um so after months of applying, interviewing, and all the standard approaches to getting a job, I said, if I don't change my game plan, I'm just gonna keep getting the same result. Because there's a billion people looking for jobs right now. And so I I uh I decided I decided to appeal directly to the leadership at different companies where I thought I could make a significant impact with uh with a mission statement almost telling them exactly how I would make that impact. Um and it worked. And so I got my first real technology sales job because I was a customer of that technology before. Right, um, I I implored them that I understood the value more than their salespeople did, and I can convey that to customers in a better way. They bought my story, had a great career there,

Selling Enterprise Video And The Pandemic Boom

SPEAKER_01 1:23:09

and ever since then, I've been providing video technology to um uh predominantly enterprise customers in the Fortune 500 who use video today to communicate, to train, to onboard, to provide customer enablement, to resolve field service management problems, and there's a plethora of areas in business where video has now evolved to where it's like the preferred way to do these things. Whereas before it was just for entertainment. My old world was just video for entertainment, um, and now it's really a business tool, and so I've I've been a top seller in just about every enterprise video platform company of note over the last 20 years.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:06

Yeah, so if so we back it all the way up, though, you take a look at when you really jumped into this in 1997, you have seen it go from a technology that current technology couldn't handle to now a technology that really companies can't function without. What was it like watching like all of that change take place? And I want to kind of note also that like you you saw this coming between 97 and 99, but there's not a damn thing you could do about it because of the limits of the technology to what it is today. Was there a little bit of frustration in there as you watched this expand? That's an insightful question, my friend.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:01

I've never had anybody ask me that question the way you just did. Good job. It was frustrating because in my heart I knew the potential power. Um for the first decade uh among customers, video was seen as somewhat of a utility, like a nice to have kind of capability. And then a little thing called the pandemic came along. So selfishly, I was always hoping for what I would call a flashpoint moment, right? There needs to be some flashpoint thing that kickstarts people's interest in this video as a business data type, not just the nights to have. In March of 2020, that moment happened when the two weeks turned into much longer. Uh, and the reaction on the part of most Fortune 500 companies was what I call a tactical response to a strategic problem. They went out and told their teams max out my Zoom licenses, max out my team's licenses, whatever's got video in it, I want all of it, and I want it now because everybody else is going to be clamoring for it. We want that capacity. We don't yet know what we're gonna do with it, but we know this. All of our employees are gonna be home, and all of our customers are gonna be home. So, how are we gonna keep our business moving? All of a sudden, overnight, video becomes clearly in focus on at a much higher level in these companies than it had ever been before. And that was a gift, albeit a tragic thing for the world. It was the most incredible gift for video in business in general, because those companies then put themselves through a self-imposed proof of concept that I didn't have I didn't have to encourage them to do. They were going to do it anyway. So then what happened was they found out video is important, it does allow us to achieve outcomes that we couldn't do with any other kind of content. And then the next question after the pandemic simmered down was from the CFO why do we have 12 different video-related software products that we bought in March of 2020? Why do we have all these? They don't serve a purpose anymore. Can we consolidate that under one hood? Is there some enterprise video management solution out there that can support all of our video use cases? Luckily, the answer is yes. And luckily for me, that's what I represent today.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:06

I hate the term resiliency. I feel like that's just another you know, catchphrase or or or word on your bingo card. But um you alluded to also 2008. Um you kind of had a repeat or high. You talk a little bit about that. And we don't want it to be story and we all go through it. And I feel like many times we feel like we're the only person that ever go through. How do we provide it? Yeah, we provide it for the most part. We want to have to do it together. How do they work out?

SPEAKER_01 1:28:57

So 2008 was not a good year for most anybody. Um, the housing crisis then

2008 Crisis And A Lifeline Offer

SPEAKER_01 1:29:05

rippled out to affect just about every industry. Um in 2007, I made the biggest sale for my company that they'd ever made. Um, and I was assured that a good portion of the of those proceeds would be up would be reinvested in the product to improve the product so that I could go make even uh more money and solve more problems. It's a video product, I won't name the company, but um uh that didn't happen. The the owners of the company instead took that money and and used it to spin off a new venture that had nothing to do with me. So I was left holding the bag, and uh that company subsequently went belly up. And it was Christmas of 2008. I was called by the investors of that company, and they said, we'd like you to try and sell what's left of this company. We'll pay you a handsome commission. I had no other prospects because 2008 was very much like 2001 from a job hunting perspective. So I went on a tour, uh, put together a proposal on the benefits of this company and why you would want to buy it as another technology company, why you would want to buy it. I found a bunch of tech companies for whom I thought their technology would be appropriate and beneficial and valuable. Um and the last pitch I made was to a company in Atlanta, and at the end of that pitch, I was in the elevator lobby, dejected because they had told me great pitch. Um, we're not we don't want to buy this company. Um, it's a it's a it's a good fit, but we don't we're just not feeling it, we're just not seeing it. So it's just before Christmas. I have no income. I just failed at selling this company, and I'm in the lobby waiting for the elevator. And just before I get in the elevator, the CEO of the company comes out and shakes my hand and he goes, Look, hey, we're not interested in buying your company, but we're interested in buying you. Can you come back Monday? We think you'd be a great addition to our enterprise sales team. And I got in the elevator and wept like a baby all the way down. Because you know what I was thinking was this is going to be a replay of 2001.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:00

Uh but again, look, circumstances. I I would I tried to pitch them to buy a technology, and they and in doing so, they were able to see how good I was at influence. And they're like, holy crap. So they hired me, and I had a great career there. They were bought, which always happens in technology. Um, and since then I've I've made graceful moves from one enterprise video platform to the next, built my personal brand, built a network that's massive, and I think that I put in place a good assurance that I will never face that again. Um but it's it's funny, you cannot make a muscle stronger without applying resistance to it. And a challenge is just resistance. So just do another rep and get stronger. Uh, I always tell people that in my experience, and I think in anyone's experience, if you're truly honest, if you look back over the decades of your life and you highlight the times during which there was some great thing that you achieved, just before that was a challenge. The challenge was the genesis of you rising a little higher than your comfort zone, and and and actually was the impetus of you achieving things you probably never would have had you not faced that challenge. That's been my experience. So, challenge today doesn't do anything for me except make me want to find the opportunity and the challenge. That's where my brain and my mind is going. Like, what okay, what's the gift that's hidden here that we're not paying attention to? Um, I think if you do that, uh it's a much healthier mental way to go about dealing with your problems. You know, I think Tony Robbins in one of his books says something like uh, um, it's not what happens to you in life that counts, it's how you react to what happens to you in life that counts.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:28

Yeah. Dobson said life is 1% about what happens to you and 99% about your reaction to it. Um, you know, I've also heard it said there are no stressful situations, there's just stressful reactions to situations.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:45

Yeah, I mean, we all have a choice of how we're going to react. And it it doesn't feel like it in the moment, but it is a choice.

unknown 1:34:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:54

It is a choice to lose my shit. Or it's also a choice to just hold my finger up, step out, take some deep breaths, think, and then react.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:09

You know. Yeah. Um, but yes, my life is a is ultimately uh a story of overcoming challenges. Like, that's just it. Like, you know, you if you ask a guy like Elon Musk, like what drives him, what drives him, apparently, at least according to what I've learned from his own mouth, is that he sees his life as a series of problems that need to be solved. And he loves the solving of problems. He's not thinking about the money, even though he's a trillionaire on any given day or not. Um, he's just passionate and driven to solve problems. And as a salesperson, that's really my job is to figure out what problems my customers have to solve, and then asking myself, can I solve that problem with video in a way that drives a better outcome than any other way? Um, you know, I do but I do this in my life at home as well. Like I fix my own cars.

Belief, Reaction, And Finding The Gift

SPEAKER_01 1:36:26

I'm not a mechanic, but finding the working around that the problem, uh, and failing basically over and over and over till you figure it out. That's those two things. It's education, which I now love. I love learning, and I like to solve problems. So uh yeah, people go through tough stuff. I think a lot of my perspective seems hokey to some folks, especially younger folks. I would say um when you're I would say that um you can literally manifest your life into what you want it to be. If you will if you protect yourself against being distracted by the depression of the day or the bad thing that happened, or the grade you didn't get, or the job you callback you didn't get, if you can just pick a destination, make it clear in your mind, you don't need to know the how of how to get there as much as you need to know the why. Like, why do I want to do that thing? Why do I want to achieve that thing? And the why will build up enough momentum so it doesn't feel so much like a climb up a hill, it feels like you're rolling down to your goal.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:05

Yeah. I I I used to work for um who's a vice president of um human resources. She would always say, I know, I know um what it is I'm trying to achieve. Um, I know what it is I want what the how is one of my do. I I just I just have to do the things that I know that I'm supposed to be doing, uh the how will take care of itself through, you know, a lot of the spirituality of everyone kind of hit their own thing, but what the hell is one of my doing? Um I do want to add uh there's two more things that I do want to cover. And one is um if you could just briefly talk about your children, um, because I know personally when we talk, they're

Parenting On Purpose And Proud Kids

SPEAKER_00 1:38:54

they're pretty important to you, but um, I just want to kind of capture um, you know, generally your your thoughts on your children and and where they're at today.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:06

Um I'll first start with a conversation that I had with my big sister in 1991-ish. She asked me, How come you're not having kids? We had been married for four years. And I said, I'm waiting for the right time. And she said, Well, you're gonna wait forever then, because there's never a right time. And that conversation really changed my perspective. Now, my wife wanted to have kids right away, and I held her off and held her off and held her off. And I thought to myself, my sister's absolutely right. Let's just go. So in 1993, we had our boy Connor. Um, before he was born, my wife and I sat down in the living room and faced each other, and we we both had a pad of paper, something to write on, and we discussed how are we gonna raise children? What are the values that are foundational to this family? What is appropriate behavior and what is not? Well, how do we feel about education? What's our perspective on sports and how important is it gonna be to their lives? We what we went through the whole thing, and we got aligned, and we've been aligned for our entire lives as it relates to raising kids. We've never had an argument on that, we never stood on opposite sides of the table. And I think part of the reasons our kids turned out as awesome as they are is because they never they never sensed any variation between what dad thought and what mom thought. Um, I was uh and I also told my wife at that same meeting, I said, All right, we're gonna have kids, they're gonna be my focus for the next 25 years. But after that, I'm gonna go pay attention to me. And I kept that promise. I made my children my number one priority, and uh I loved them. I loved all the exhaustion, all of the sports events. I don't think I saw a weekend for 20 years that didn't have me driving to, from, or parked at a sporting event. Um both excellent students, both outstanding athletes. My daughter was on a state champion volleyball winning team uh in Georgia. His son uh won the state championships in tennis and then was recruited uh to play tennis in college and then led that team to record uh outcomes and then uh actually came to me after college and said, Can you still hear me, Bill? Yeah, I can hear you. He said, Dad, is it crazy for me to want to go on the pro tour and try to become a pro tennis player? I said, No, what's crazy is you sitting on a barstool when you're 50 telling your friends how you could have been a pro tennis player. Yeah, you can afford you can afford to fail now. Go. Go go do your best. If you do your best and you make it, great. If you do your best and you don't make it, you won't be able to whine about it the rest of your life. You'll be good, you'll be good. That's exactly what he did. So today he's uh he came off the tour a few years back, and he's a super successful uh surprise salesman, technology salesman.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:58

Huh.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:00

Uh daughter is a uh Wiz kid. Um, she's uh a software uh genius, she's a senior software engineer for AT ⁇ T out in Dallas. Wow. Both of them married. Um and uh yeah, I'm super proud of my kids. The beautiful moment, a beautiful thing happens when your children, where you've no longer where your interactions with your kids no longer include a teaching moment. It's just your friends. So today my kid my kids are just my friends, really good friends, too. I love them, I respect them, I love interacting with them, but it's different because I don't have to teach them anything. I don't have to course correct. In fact, we're at the point now where my kids are beginning to give me life advice, which is interesting.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:56

It's a good space to be in.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:59

Yeah. Um, I thoroughly loved being a father. I loved dedicating my life to that as a primary focus, and I don't regret it a bit. But today I'm pretty selfish. I'm I'm delving into things that are selfish, like music production, video production. Um, I'm a lawn geek. I spend way too much time trying to take care of my lawn and uh gardening. I have a dog I love dearly, and I do a lot of training with him, and and I'm in Charleston, so I love the beach and I love to fish. Um uh writing, I'm working on two books. You know, I put a lot off. I put a lot off, and I and I meant what I said, and I think my kids appreciate what I did. I think I did the right thing. Um you know, I didn't really give up anything that I couldn't have picked up afterwards, like I said. Try to take care of myself, try to work out a lot, try to eat a very clean diet, trying to stave off father time as as best I can so that I can do these more selfish things. Um but yeah, being a dad was um super enjoyable.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:24

Yeah. Yeah, I I can tell. And I can tell from our conversations over the years. Um, so uh I wanted to ask, um, you know, as we sort of wind up our conversation, uh, one is that uh we've covered a lot uh in the last couple hours. Is there anything that we haven't covered that you wanted to talk about?

SPEAKER_01 1:45:48

Um well, I just want to say thank you to all the vets out there. Uh, because I

Advice To Veterans And Owning Your Story

SPEAKER_01 1:45:56

do appreciate your sacrifice. Um I always knew in the military and after I always knew uh and had respect for the fact that a lot of people in the military go through a hell of a lot more tough things than I did. I kind of got it past because I was in the military in the only five-year period, I think, where there wasn't even a conflict going on. It ended before I started, and the Gulf War I didn't start until after I got out. So I feel like I um a little bit embarrassed to be honest with you, but uh but I I guess what I want to express is that there's probably a lot of veterans watching this. So uh from the bottom of my heart, I certainly respect and appreciate what you've done. Um and uh I would say to them, be uh, as there's a lot of vets out there, for instance, transitioning into the civilian world, own your military background. It's something to be proud of, and it's something that differentiates you, and it is super valuable as compared to the kid out of college who has zero experience doing anything real. Um, but uh thankful for the time. Glad that uh that you're still my friend. And uh yeah, I don't really have anything else to add. This has been very enjoyable.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:26

All right. Well, I'm gonna ask you one more tough question then before we go. So, for someone who's watching this video or listening to this conversation a hundred years from now, when neither one

Legacy, Epitaph, And Being More Good

SPEAKER_00 1:47:38

of us are here, unless there's some magic of modern medicine we don't know about, um, what would you like them to take away from this conversation and the way you've lived your life?

SPEAKER_01 1:47:51

I always tell my children that I want my epitaph on my tombstone to be simple. Here lies Sean McMahon. He was more good than bad. That's how I've tried to live my life. I try to be a good person. I try to uh one gentleman referred to me recently as a bucket filler. I want to be remembered as someone who lifted people above where they were, challenged them to be more than they thought they could, and helped and help helped them when they least expected that I would show up. That's kind of the kind of person I try to be.

SPEAKER_00 1:48:38

All right. Well, thanks for sharing that. Thanks for sitting down with me for a couple hours today. Um, I really appreciate it. Thanks, Bill.