So tell us about that backstory.

You know, our backgrounds aren't that much different in the fact that although I went to the University of Florida, great school, took a bunch of great classes, but the business idea really came from my own ideation.

I was a college student and I understood the need and the desire for late night delivery.

College students, I always tell people this, college students don't eat breakfast.

Their lunch is their breakfast, their dinner, and then they eat this third meal of the day, which is typically after 10 p.m. And I was always one that studied entrepreneurs and successful businesses.

And the one that I really studied was Domino's Pizza.

People don't know this.

interesting stuff, right? Like, how do you leave that? And how did you make that decision? And then what was the next trajectory like from there?

And, Matt, you must be just scratching your head watching all this happen to Ed Sheeran.

Hi, Paul W. I have been puzzled by some of this, but not really surprised, because I think what we've seen from Ed Sheeran, and your audience should know, he is enormously popular.

He sells out huge stadiums all over the world.

What he has done is he let other people take control of his message, and any time that happens, if somebody speaks for you other than you, then they're not going to say what you want them to say.

And that's what happened here.

And he finally got a chance to speak for himself over the weekend in front of another big crowd in Philadelphia and said what he wanted to say, and that's probably going to help.

Certainly it's a step in the right direction for him rather than let others take control of the narrative, which is what has been happening over the last couple of weeks.

Unfortunate, but a big lesson to be learned.

And, Matt, you must be just scratching your head watching all this happen to Ed Sheeran.

Hi, Paul W. I have been puzzled by some of this, but not really surprised, because I think what we've seen from Ed Sheeran, and your audience should know, he is enormously popular.

He sells out huge stadiums all over the world.

What he has done is he let other people take control of his message, and any time that happens, if somebody speaks for you other than you, then they're not going to say what you want them to say.

And that's what happened here.

And he finally got a chance to speak for himself over the weekend in front of another big crowd in Philadelphia and said what he wanted to say, and that's probably going to help.

Certainly it's a step in the right direction for him rather than let others take control of the narrative, which is what has been happening over the last couple of weeks.

Unfortunate, but a big lesson to be learned.

Bring us up to speed on what's going on this morning.

So this morning, the three news outlets that have been banned from White House coverage, that is, so everybody knows, CNN, MSNOW, and Politico have filed a joint lawsuit in federal court stating that this could not be allowed under the first amendment.

Uh, lawyers were probably working all weekend on that.

Now it's been filed, which happened in the last hour or so.

That is significant.

We've never seen anything like this, the TV networks that work together on what we call pool coverage.

And that's something that the TV stations in the Detroit market do.

If it happens on a regular basis, what is an appropriate response?

Bring us up to speed on what's going on this morning.

So this morning, the three news outlets that have been banned from White House coverage, that is, so everybody knows, CNN, MSNOW, and Politico have filed a joint lawsuit in federal court stating that this could not be allowed under the First Amendment.

Lawyers were probably working all weekend on that.

Now it's been filed, which happened in the last hour or so that is significant.

We've never seen anything like this.

The TV networks that work together on what we call pool coverage, And that's something that the TV stations in the Detroit market do.

It's something we've seen for big events like the Mackinac Policy Conference here in Michigan, where it's an efficiency standpoint.

If it happens on a regular basis, what is an appropriate response?

Now, maybe I'm just getting old, which I am, but it seems like a problem, and it seems very expensive, too, for something that was supposed to be less expensive.

Yeah, when cord cutters were bragging a few years ago about all the money they were saving by getting rid of cable, one of the things I told them is be careful what you wish for.

And one of the things that they wished for is I only want to pay for the channels I want.

I don't want to pay for all this stuff I don't watch.

And I think what we have here is a worst case scenario for a lot of consumers where they thought they were only buying the channels that they would watch.

But then the programming, especially live sports, the most popular programming on TV gets spread around all these different channels.

And you have to pay for each of them a la carte and they're kind of pricey.

Is there not some way to get the companies to say, look, if you want to watch football, you can watch them on any of these four platforms?

Mm.

You know, you started something, you built it, and then you exited it.

And I think for a lot of entrepreneurs that eventually exit, um, you know, it is something where you have to then decide, what are you really gonna focus your time and, and passion on? Because that phase of your life is really over.

And for me, I took-- I stayed on board for nine months.

I was somewhat a figurehead.

You know, the, the people that bought us were kind of going down their own path, so to speak.

And for me, it was, uh...

Mm-hmm

How are you?

Good morning, Kevin.

I'm all right.

Thanks for digging into this one with me.

You about outrageous videos, the outrage of the day.

Some of them come and go pretty quickly.

This one, I think, is different.

Do you think it's possible there's no women in the decision making? I would think if a woman were to see this, they would immediately raise at least questions about it.

How are you?

Good morning, Kevin.

Uh, I'm all right.

Thanks for digging into this one with me.

You know, we end up talking a lot here on this show about outrageous videos.

You know, the outrage of the day.

Some of them come and go pretty quickly.

Uh, do you, do you think it's possible there's, there's no women in the decision-making? I would think, uh, if a woman were, were to see this, they would immediately, uh, raise, uh, at least questions about it.

to be

able to actually open our first storefront, which opened in 1994.

Now, I don't want the audience to think that we built this absolutely beautiful, amazing restaurant.

Like, this was lipstick on a pig, right? Like...

1,000, 1,200 square feet next to campus.

It was formerly a bakery.

Right.

in a period

Why, why Athens? Why so far away? I mean, I know, I know, uh, uh, Georgia isn't too far from Florida [laughs], but, like, why not go to the next college town over?

It was a mistake.

We should have.

That's a great...

I, it was a good learning experience because what we found out quickly was that no one knew who we were in, at the University of Georgia.

It was like we had to educate everyone, like, "Who-- What is this concept?" When we should-- We could have gone to Florida State, which was two hours away.

We could have gone to Jacksonville.

Was there any talk about what's next, or were you thinking, "We'll just keep going, man"?

I'm working on my five books, and I've been working on my... sixth and seventh one as well and i once you start writing uh it is something that keeps you going i believe it does for me so your story is very very interesting one uh matt so we'll cover a lot of ground here in the next hour and it's going to be very very interesting for our global listeners and watchers about this success story starting with nothing really um you know in 1992 so tell give us the story even before that you know so you were from originally from florida and then take us forward from there to your to the colleges and then to 1992 but what happened before that

Yeah, so I think I was just a regular all American kid, right? I grew up in a middle class household.

My mom was a teacher.

My dad worked for a real estate company.

And I think for me, I always looked up to business owners as pseudo celebrities.

I was always enamored that someone could own their own business and create their own kind of destiny or wealth.

So I was a very normal college student.

There has always been an interest on my part in terms of coming out of holland in particular as of uh you know franchising on food and and and quick food in particular uh for that market so i've always been interested at some point i'd like to talk to you about that uh as you go well

And if they are, they're probably not really taking any real action on it.

It's a wonderful question.

And first of all, as a kid growing up, I grew up in a middle class family just outside of New York City in Long Island, New York.

And, you know, my mom was a teacher.

My dad had a full time job for a company.

But I always looked at these business owners as like pseudo celebrities.

Like I always wanted to be them.

And, you know, this isn't just going to be a flash in the pan.

Now, what gives you hope going forward in this arena?

I think what really gives me hope is knowing that as I get in front of people, as I engage people, a lot of people really do care.

I think the big fundamental disconnect in the world today is we don't know how to take people by the hand and walk them down a path to be a part of helping to make the world a better place.

You know, I think I meant to be the change, and the fundamental conclusion that I came from spending 35 years in development, and I just gave you an example for human trafficking, that we're not getting anywhere close to addressing even 5% of any of the developmental issues.

So the expectation that government officials and the NGOs and even the private sector is going to address that by themselves is just illogical, and it's not, it's not a defendable argument.

There's not enough resources.

There's not a much attention.

Were you talking about things you have talked about in, in some of these talks over the years? Just could you walk us through your style of writing?

Like we're missing like the core of it all.

Quite often.

And that used to be so fundamental.

When I first started in the PR business after I left broadcast news, what we were doing fundamentally was connecting audiences with information.

Of course, with messaging and perspective and things like that.

But at the core, it was about information.

And we had news outlets in this community, but mirrored all over the country that commanded such a large audience that the fundamental information could get communicated and could get through.

Yeah.

So how do how do you balance those two things?

Balance is the right word.

And I think with public officials and they need to be reminded of this more often.

They absolve themselves of a certain level of privacy.

They can't handle a situation the way that private unknown people can, especially When they're on the public payroll which Senator McConnell still is so something has to give here, he needs to talk to someone or the family needs to talk to someone.

or a press secretary or chief of staff or a family spokesperson needs to offer some information or clarity or context, otherwise this vortex.

will continue and it will be run by rumors and speculation and people trying to fill in the blanks.

And there's this discussion about, OK, when's it time to call it a career and to leave with dignity and to leave on the top of your game? How would you advise a political candidate on this point?

So what was one or two things you could think about right off the top of your head that was just such a painful time in Wing Zone's history?

Yeah.

Well, first one I'm gonna do, talk a little bit about was really a challenging time for us because we had really started to expand aggressively, like, uh, going from opening three or four stores a year to 10 to 15 stores.

And I think one thing that, uh, was painful for us was we started to really expand outside of our core base of the southeast United States, and all of a sudden you start saying, "Well, this franchisee wants to open in Las Vegas," or open in Des Moines, Iowa, or open in, you know, New Jersey or something.

And you start to think that you're invincible, like we can open anywhere and do those things.

Um, I did not realize how challenging it would be to support our franchisees from a further distance, and then ultimately, we dealt with a heavy supply chain business.

Maybe in your business it's not s- as much.

Yeah.

Take us through that.

It's something really special that we do here in Michigan.

Our board of the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame over the last decade or so has tried to tweak our processes to make sure that that we're really honoring every year the best of Michigan sports and the people who deserve to be remembered forever.

From across the state, from across the variety of sports, we're talking about men and women and boys and girls who've accomplished amazing things.

And one of the ways that we've tried to assure that we do that is by getting fans involved, getting the public involved.

So 20% of the votes go to the fans to decide who's going to be inducted each year.

And through next week, fans have a chance to go on to michigansportshof.org, michigansportshof, like halloffame.org, and vote for amateur athletes from the state of Michigan, professional athletes from the state of Michigan.

I mean, that's an example of names who are eligible for fans to weigh in and vote their favorites.

Take us through that.

It's something really special that we do here in Michigan.

Our board of the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame over the last decade or so has tried to tweak our processes to make sure that that we're really honoring every year the best of Michigan sports and the people who deserve to be remembered forever.

From across the state, from across the variety of sports, we're talking about men and women and boys and girls who've accomplished amazing things.

And one of the ways that we've tried to assure that we do that is by getting fans involved, getting the public involved.

So 20% of the votes go to the fans to decide who's going to be inducted each year.

And through next week, fans have a chance to go on to MichiganSportsHOF.org, MichiganSportsHOF, like HallOfFame.org, and vote for amateur athletes from the state of Michigan, professional athletes from the state of Michigan.

I mean, that's an example of names who are eligible for fans to weigh in and vote their favorites.

I mean, there's an argument to be made for that.

I agree.

There are several things that are true simultaneously.

And one of the things that's true is that 60 minutes along with everything else on traditional, or as we say in the industry, linear TV, needs to evolve.

The platform options need to expand.

It needs to be more interesting to and more accessible by younger and growing audiences.

There's no question.

Has no one there figured out that this just would not end well?

I mean, there's an argument to be made for that.

I agree.

There are several things that are true simultaneously.

And one of the things that's true is that 60 minutes along with everything else on traditional, or as we say in the industry, linear TV, needs to evolve.

The platform options need to expand.

It needs to be more interesting to and more accessible by younger and growing audiences.

There's no question.

Has no one there figured out that this just would not end well?

So,

yeah, it's true, but it also was a wake up call of just what could happen.

And so, you know, I think Adam and I, we always had these really open conversations, deep conversations about like, What do you want to do? Do you want to do this for the next 10 or 20 years? Are you still passionate about wing zone? Do you love it? And I think I asked him one day, I said, what do you think about pursuing an exit? And he said, listen, I'm, I'm open to it.

You know, Adam was not the most vocal guy or a lot of the ideas came from me, but he was my partner.

And so I wanted to do this with him or without him, but.

I think the interesting thing based on my career is that I founded a company, I grew it, and then we exited it.

And exiting a company is not an easy process.

Matt, who are you trying to help today with Friedman Associates? What's your primary target and what level are you aiming?