Bill Byrd

He is a successful businessman best known for building the "Sweet Shop Fudge Love Chocolate Factory.”, which has become one of the largest hand dipped chocolate factories in America. Today, Byrd is owner of the Byrd Group where he helps small companies turn around their businesses. He has also put his entrepreneurial skills to work as a founding board member of the Christian schools in Mexico, which houses and instructs 350 students from impoverished areas. Bill has captured his tools of leadership in this wonderful new book “Sweet Success - Twelve Proven Habits of Winning Leaders.”
===================================================================

RAS: Robert Anthony Schuller
BB: Bill Byrd

RAS:
My guest today is an Entrepreneur. His name is Bill Byrd. He is a successful businessman best known for building the "Sweet Shop Fudge Love Chocolate Factory.” How did you turn a fudge factory into the largest hand dipped factory in the nation?

BB:
I was at Neiman’s, Neiman Marcus; we were selling them some of our chocolates. We were kind of their house chocolate. We did most of their production for them. And the buyer told me one day, she said, make us something special. And if you really want to be in the inside here you make it something special. So I said, what can that be? And she had an idea of a truffle.

At that time there was no such thing as a chocolate truffle. So Judie and I, my wife, went over to Belgium and we saw some different types of chocolates, and we came back and we created, if you take your thumb, your forefinger together, a size of chocolate about that big. It was about an ounce and a half. The normal size chocolate is about a half an ounce, and we said we’re going to call it a chocolate truffle. And it was dipped in three different dipping’s and it was pretty complex.

And I told Neiman’s took it. They jumped right on it. And I went over there one day and they were selling them for $3 a piece and it scared me to death. And I said... my wife; I said this isn’t going to work. Nobody’s going to pay $3 for a piece... one piece of chocolate. And I was there one day during the season and I was noticing... as a candy man, of course I was down by the candy counter. I noticed that businessmen were coming there and buying two of them. And that was their lunch, a $6 lunch. And I said... so I called my wife and I said we’ve got something. It took off. We ended up making, got a call from Sacs Fifth Avenue. Got a call from Marshall Fields. We were turning out about two and a half tons a day of those chocolate truffles during the season. It was a phenomenal ride.

RAS:
So is there a chocolate season?

BB:
Well, the colder it is people eat more chocolate. It does have a season.

RAS:
Now since then I understand you’ve sold the company and you’re now devoting your time and your energy into helping small businesses succeed. How do you do that?

BB:
Boy, there are so many people out there that want to own their own business. Or they think they should own their own business. Or they would like to.. they’re a leader and they are not quite... they haven’t honed their skills. Or they’re a manager and “Bill am I doing it right?” And so we spend time with them and that’s how I wrote the book just trying to address how can you, as a Christian, as a believer, is there anything Biblically that we can apply, give us that 4th dimension let’s say to help us in leaderships skills. So that’s how we do it.

RAS:
So what you have in here “Sweet Success - 12 Proven Habits of Winning Leadership.” What do you think is the foundational leadership skill that all Entrepreneurs need to learn?

BB:
Well, you go to business school and of course you’ve got to have a business plan. You got to have those things. You have to know how to read a financial. But I think if there’s two of those elements that I feel are the most important it would be humility and it would be staying on top and having passion. Because you are going to go through a tough time. Things aren’t always going up. There will be a time, you know, hit a dip, and if you don’t have that passion or that fire in your belly, you’ll give up. You’ll give up.

RAS:
You mentioned humility. Describe that a little bit more. People don’t normally ascribe humility with one of the key factors in leadership.

BB:
And yet it is. When you talk to any great leaders the first thing they learn is to serve others. And to serve others you’ve got to be humble. You’ve got to say thank You, Lord for where I am. I used to go into my office and I’d get on my knees and I say Lord there’s a thousand other people who could probably do this better than I can do. I’m just the fortunate one to be able to do it. And I think if you put your heart in that vernacular you learn to serve others and you become, there’s an old saying that says “It’s amazing how far a person can go if he’s not concerned who gets the credit.” And that’s what humility is.

RAS:
And that’s what you’re doing. Appreciate it.

BB:
We try. Thank you. Thank you.

RAS:
You have a firm belief in Jesus Christ. Tell me about your relationship with Him.

BB:
When I had my accident my thinking changed. Before that I was a hard charge up the hill entrepreneur wanting to conquer the world like all of us, but profoundly when two cars came together, there were five total occupants between the two cars and three lost their lives at that instant. And I was one of the survivors. I mean your life changes. And during that next year when I was... put my bones back together and finding out I’m alive again, God spoke to me. Because I was asking the big questions then. Like why am I here? You know, what’s the purpose of life? In this period of history of mankind why am I the one that gets to live at this point in time? And God spoke to me. Here’s what He said, He said, Bill, don’t be concerned about yourself. Be concerned about the other guy. Be concerned about your employees. Even if you might have to, you know you can squeeze some profit out of someplace, but it might hurt an employee. He might not be able to take care of his family. So don’t do that. Don’t worry about yourself. I’ll take care of you. And that profoundly changed my way of doing business.

RAS:
Wow. How do you reconcile those two? Taking care of the balance of the... is it just faith and confidence that God’s going to help balance the budget at the end of the year?

BB:
It takes a lot of faith. I mean even in a church as large as this. You have to have a budget. And God supplies. And you have to have faith that those things are going to take place. You got to work hard. You got to work diligently. But you know the fruit of the spirit, love, joy, peace, kindness, faithfulness can you apply those to a person that can charge up the hill and not hurt people as he goes? You can. You can with a faith in God you can do that.