Episode 96 - Lynda Resnick on Predicting Winning Products, Outliers and Rubies and Cuties

Transcript

Susan Bratton: Welcome to Dishy Mix. This is your host Susan Bratton and on  todays show you are going to get to meet Lynda Resnick. Lynda is the  co-chairman of a company called Roll International Corporation. It doesn't  sound like a big thing but wait till you hear the collection of healthy  brands that are rolled up into Roll. It includes Pom wonderful, the  delicious pomogranate juice that i just completely love. Telaflora, Fiji  water, paramed farms and paramed citrus which include brands you might  know called Everybodies nuts, Pistachios, almond accents and  those  mandarin oranges that people are buying in droves called Cuties. Lynda and  her husband Stuart also owned and ran the Franklin Mint from the mid eighties until 2005 when  they sold that business and have great stories on the show about that. She has a new book. Its called Rubies In The Orchard -how to uncover the hidden gems in your business. Its the Pom queens secrets to marketing just about anything and her advice is solid. I found the book to be a beautiful balance of marketing wisdom and her impressive biography. And we are going to talk about both on the show today. I also want to tell you and i usually dont go into a long bio on these shows, but Lynda is an amazing woman. She is doing so much in the world and you are about to explore that. She is on the executive board of the Aspen Institute, What a wonderful place for place for great syncing. she is the patron of the art says the vice-chairman of the Los angelos  county Museum O f Arts on the board of trustees. she is also a trustee of one of my favourite art museums in the whole world and i have been to a lot of art museums, The Philadelpia Museum of Art. Lynda is also actively involved in medical programs with UCLA were she in 2005, they had the  Stuart and Lynda Resnick  Neuro psychiatric Hospital that was named for she and her husband. And she serves on the executive board of the UCLA Medical sciences,the Prostate cancer foundation and the Milken family foundation which is doing amazing work both in health and in cater to educations. so she spends a lot of time on all these great brands and on a  lot of work thats doing incerdible good for other people in the world . you are going to see that as a theme throughout the show.so lets get her on and welcome her. Welcome Lynda Resnick .How are you today?

Lynda Resnick: I am well Susan and how are you?

Susan Bratton:Very wel.i just i had,u know i usually keep the bio  supershort but i wanted everyone to know the breadth of the work you are  doing in the world.

Lynda Resnick: Thank You

Susan Bratton: So i enjoyed your book.You told me that when we were  getting ready for the interview that one of the things that pushed your  edge the hardest in your whole life was writing and promoting this  book .That it was up there as one of the hardest things. i dont believe u  for a minute. I have seen your interviews everywhere from The LA Times and  Charlie Rose and you seem like a natural. How could this have been hard  for you?

Lynda Resnick: Well you know, i have never written a book before so its  out of your comfort zone when it is something u have never done before and 
writing is such a creative process that it exposes you. I t exposes your  inner most fears and hopes and so not knowing how the book would be  accepted and worrying about marketing this book in this day and age when  the publisher does so little to the author . That you really have to learn  the publishing business and the publishing marketing business as quickly  as possible to promote a book well so its been a stretch but its been  certainly i wouldn't trade it for anything ,lets put it that way. I am  happy i did it
 
Susan Bratton: well, its really a delight to read. You have great sage marketing  advice and your life story and i think you  wove it together really well. so  its a little peanut butter and a little chocolate.

Lynda Resnick: Oh my favourite combination

Susan Bratton: Mine too especially if its in Benjuries icecreams. So i have a, i wanna go way back to the past for you. This is early days when you are  kind of getting started in business with Stuart. Your husband sold the  janetorial service to ITT and he bankrolled the money he got from that into  buying land. You have now all this amazing land that we are going to talk later about paramed farms, paramed citrus, some of the work you are doing with lead certified greening of your businesses. But what was your vision way back then? Why were you buying all that land?

Lynda Resnick: Well, first of all, Stuart had this vision of the land, it  was really his vision, i was the president of Teleflora those days , and thats what i did all day. so we have this seperation of church and  state in this marriage, its hard to relate surrounding the business or the businesses and Stuart started investing in orange growing land and today we have 200 square miles of trees in the sand walking valley and they grow the cuties which are clemetine mandarin oranges and pistachios and almonds and ofcourse my pomogranate.

Susan Bratton: your babies. Your Rubies in the Orchard

Lynda Resnick: Right. But that grew over time and what i try to tell people  about business, when today for instance i am speaking to UCLA, i want to  tell these young people that patience is somthing thats important and we  had started buying orange growing land in the early seventies and it took  all these years to build up this orchards where today we have 14 million  trees but you know you have to have patience if you are in that business

Susan Bratton:So was your vision to be essentially a farming company? you  wanted to be in the food business?

Lynda Resnick : susan I know this may come as ashock to you but i dont have the vision for growing the businesses. i mean i do for marketing and creating the concepts for the businesses but Stuart makes the accusitions and i really stayed out of the farming What i did when i left the Frnklin mint is convince him that we should turn these commodities into brands.

Susan Bratton:Ya

Lynda Resnick: And thats my contribution to the Roll family of companies,  where i have taken, you know the pistachios and created wonderful  pistachios and everybodies nuts and Pom wonderful and soforth but  before that we were a commodity business in farming and brand is so essential in todays world especially if you have any selling proposition which all of our brands do and so thats what my contribution is then

Susan Bratton: Got it. you know you said in your book that at the mint i  learned how to predict and develope winning products, and that is a big part 
of what you explain in Rubies In The Orchard. Can you tell us how you  learned to predict and develope these winning products?

Lynda Resnick: By talking to collectors. It is so simple really. Now of course its so cheap because you can do your research on the internet . My god you can sign up for Zoomerang for 20 dollars a month. I mean anybody can do it and do research on any demographic group. But in those days we ran focus groups constantly. We had 8 million collectors around the world and we did unique product lines for Germany, for Japan, for the UK and even for france . so I ran world wide of product development and just in the US alone we created 1500 new products a year that we took to market places and board. And the way you do it, I mean I say in the book that to be a good marketer is to be a good friend, you have to listen and so we would sit and talk to our  doc collectors and find out whats important to them and to the car buyers what their fantasies were and what they always wanted to own but they never own or the car the backseat became more memorable for them and they wanted to have it in their trophy rack whatever it was. The swords of the famous rulers of the history set the boardgames . All of these things grew out of understanding the collectors hopes and dreams and that’s how we develop them.

Susan Bratton: You sold the Franklin Mint in 2005 , do you ever see products now out on the market place or come up with ideas that you are still thinking “Oh we can make that into a collectable ah that’s perfect for the Franklin Mint.” Does this still happen to you?

Lynda Resnick: Only when Obama was elected President For the United States just for 5 minutes. That I could have created a better line of products than I thought out there

Susan Bratton: Aha I can imagine that you are a big obama supporter.

Lynda Resnick: Yes. I initially supported Hillary but then ofcourse I am a democrat so I moved over to obama.

Susan Bratton: Well you are really famous for acquiring Jacques Pearls at an auction at couple of hundred thousand dollars and then creating a collectible at the franklin mint for that and I recently became aware of something called Social Object Theory. I know you are a big believer of social media  using social media for marketing now. and there is a couple of guys hugh macleod gaping voyage and this gentlemen named Gary Armstrong who is the founder of microblogging platform called jayacu and they co-developed this idea of the social object theory and they said if something is going to be successful  all successful social media interactions and  ventures centered on an object .so whether its links or video or images or bookmarks or widgets or events or subjects or products like Jacques Pearls that if its something that could do well in the social world it needs to be an object . I was thinking if you had social media at the time that you were marketing those pearls through the franklin mint it could have been incredible for you.

Lynda Resnick: it was pretty incredible we sold a 130000 strands of 200 dollars a piece. we did well. I don’t know about this concept that you are speaking about

Susan Bratton: Oh ya. Its just an affair you know. Kind of a theoretical thing

Lynda Resnick:I would like to read about it. have they written a book?

Susan Bratton: well I am sure you can google it out.. i can send you some links.

Lynda Resnick:well I wud like to read about it.

Lynda Resnick:But I will tell you why I did it . I went to a traveling exhibition of this and I stood in front of Abraham Lincoln’s hat

Susan Bratton:and you got chills

Lynda Resnick: and I got chills.and that was the first time I really realized how an object could embody a person. I mean I really felt the vibe u know and then months later when the pearls went up for auction and I saw , I went through the two catalogues the only thing I wanted were the pearls, out of hundreds and hundreds of objects because they were the ones that really were the icon .

Susan Bratton: they were the tingle

Lynda Resnick: ya

Susan Bratton: You ran teleflora for many years and you still own the company. I know that your hallmark was creating the flowers as gifts with the beautiful vases and that the whole experience was the value of what you offered compared to your bigger competitor at time of  today. you put to the world a really really well intergrated online offline marketing program for teleflora called Teleflora presents America’s favourite mom and I want u to just give us an overview of that because I think it took you over a year and a lot of touch points that people to put it together but first can we just talk about how cute Ben Silverman the head of programming, do you love him?

Lynda Resnick: I do

Susan Bratton: isnt he adorable. He is tall.

Lynda Resnick: I dint love him since the day America’s favourite mom ran on television

Susan Bratton: oh why what happened?

Lynda Resnick: well let me tell you the story of America’s favourite mom .

Susan Bratton: Ya go ahead

Lynda Resnick: so I came up with this idea actually because it was the 100th  anniversary of mother’s day and we wanted to do something to commemmerate that moment and so I found a little church where mother’s  day was first celebrated  and we made it a deal with the  church to be able to use their image in our advertising and soforth the idea started to grow and so I came up with my staff we came up with a beautiful arrangement and a beautiful vase with the golden idalium with a big heart that said America’s favourite mom and we sold that in ,we sold containers for flowers and then we market them on television and other media and online and that’s how we pulled them through , our 20000 retail shops so usually the mother’s day container is about 7 dollars wholesale but this year we made it much less expensive and because I wanted everyone in America to be America’s favourite mom. We sold the idea with television icon Marie and Donnie Osmand to NBC till then he believed in it he bought it  the first second he heard about it 

Susan Bratton: He loves marketing Intergrations . he really gets that .

Lynda Resnick: Yes and he also loves his mother . the confrontation was iresistable. Now that sounds easy. And that happened you know 8 months before the show went on but we never signed a deal with NBC until an hour brfore the show went on .so you talk about being outside your comfort zone.

Susan Bratton: The lawyers grilled you

Lynda Resnick: ya really and we had a dedicated website where people would come on the website they will have videos and letters soforth about their mom and why their mom should be elected as America’s favourite mom. We came up with five categories of moms. The winners in the five categories appeared on the Today’s Show, so we owned the Today’s Show for a week before you heard all these stories. one day it was single moms, oneday it was moms that had adopted children and at other day it was grandmoms and soforth and nonmom moms.you know we had this wonderful selection and each and every mom I mean we had like 750000 entries and a million people were on this dedicated sites and it was very hard to pick the right moms but we did and we had five finalists and the five finalists would go on the Today’s Show. And then when we had the finale which was Sunday night on NBC we all voted America voted for America’s favourite mom and it turned out to be Harry Patten later and the show was amazing. we paid for the show we actually bought the time and did the show ourselves. And the only problem was and ofcourse our sales was like off the charts. It was a fully intergrated program it was really really exciting However there was a golf game  before with our Tiger Woods and the tragedy was that they let the golf game go on and we dint show up in most markets until the last eight minutes or so and the show only aired on the west coast and in a few mountain communities and didn’t air in its entire day anywhere else in the nation . so that was very sad . But that’s life.

Susan Bratton: wow . did you have any protection against that?

Lynda Resnick: No no

Susan Bratton: Oh my god.. so that’s a live and learn. If you do this again you know that you have to negotiate no preemption or whatever it was. Right?

Lynda Resnick: Exactly to our dismay it was the most successful mother’s day in the history, we ran mother’s day ads and prints and online and everyone of the 7000000 women across America that received the bouquet were happy ,it was just a beautiful thing all around and that was America’s favourite mom 

Susan Bratton: And that’s just your first one. I am sure there are more great ideas and live and learn exactly.

Lynda Resnick:Right

Susan Bratton: We are going to a break Lynda and when we come back I want to talk about Pom, Pom X, Pom Wonderful, everything Pom and also talk about you and some of the things that you have done in your life so we will be right back .i am your host Susan Bratton

Susan Bratton: This is Susan Bratton your host and we are with Lynda Resnick ,co-chairman of Roll International and when we left we were talking about Teleflora and I want to move on to Pom wonderful. You tell the great story about how you named it and came up with the bottle shape and all of those things in the book  Really good to read, the question that I wanted to talk to you about  was moving forward from the pomegranate juice itself and creating an entire market for that , you are now putting, you are now working on Pom X, can you describe Pom X with us and what you doing with that

Lynda Resnick: Yes Pom X is an extract of the material that is left over after we juice the pomegranate and that material is so rich in antioxidants , the skin, the membrane, the seeds and soforth . that we don’t want to throw it away  but we wanna take it and make other substances out of it. It’s a way to add anti oxidants to food and drink without adding the colour of pomegranate juice. One teaspoon of PomX equals 8 ounces of pomegranate juice, that’s how strong it is , so we made it into a supplement that we only sell online at this point, because we are still in a kind of dated stage with the supplements ,but in GNC I think starting in about a month , we are selling power bars they are most delicious and Truly healthy parabar you can buy . In fact I know that they are downstairs and they are calling to me. But I am resisting.Its stapled to my deskchair so I cant get them .we also use Pom X in our tea , Pom tea and also in our Pom coffee . So it’s a wonderful ingredient and we are the only ones in the world .

Susan Bratton: I think the more people wake up to the value of  antioxidants and the anti aging capabilities of  antioxidants. The more that they are going to be interested in finding new ways to insert them into various nutrasuticals .

Lynda Resnick: Exactly and u know the particular antioxidants in Pom are polycino

Susan Bratton: Like red wine but you cant drink that much red wine .

Lynda Resnick: Well actually there is a difference. One because red wine has a different element but this is very good for inflamation and inflamation is the cause of so much disease , great for circulation and wonderful for prostate health.

Susan Bratton: which is so important that men live longer that there are so much potential for prostate cancer that you have to keep your antioxidants

Lynda Resnick:Yes

Susan Bratton: Very high in your diet. Keep that low. So you were talking in the book about the Pompills.com that the fact that you have pom X in the pill form but that’s the snake oil world u know the pills, the vitamins, distribution channel is not very palatable to you. And I wonder if you know about Dr. Nicholas Paracone, have you heard of him?

Lynda Resnick: Oh ofcourse

Susan Bratton: Love him

Lynda Resnick: we are doing projects together and he use to carry our juice to the stores, I don’t know if he does anymore . but he is lovely

Susan Bratton: Well, he is marketing his own line of vitamins , in a very interesting way and I just got an email from his email list because I use all his products, I love them. I glop that stuff on my face and body . I try to do it from the onside, from the outside, whatever it takes

Lynda Resnick: Our Pom skincare comes out

Susan Bratton: See there you go. I will be very interested in that . I saw a recent email from him that said vanity can save your life introducing the wrinkle cure system from Dr. Para cone and designed to give you beautiful skin and help you achieve optimal health for life . He has packaged up his face firming activator, his super anti oxidant vitamins , he has an anti inflammatory recipe book and he talks about the combination of  an anti-inflammatory diet, nutritional supplements and skin care and I was thinking about that for Palm pills that going after something that’s a little bit larger than just your Pom X ingredient but maybe partnering with people like paracone and he is using the cosmetics channel . He is distributing strims of flora , high end spas and that could be a really nice beach head for you .

Lynda Resnick: I think when our skincare is finished I use it all the time, you saw my skin on Charlie rose when that’s ready , when we are ready to market it, we will market it with the supplements.

Susan Bratton: Ya , it makes a lot of sense

Lynda Resnick: Ya it certainly does

Susan Bratton: I love the direction you are going

Lynda Resnick:  I am sitting here drinking Pom I took my supplement in the morning . My skin is resplentent with poms , what else can I do?

Susan Bratton: You are funny too and you told me that the animal you would like to be reincarnated as was a red wood tree . They live forever and I was like I am with you

Lynda Resnick: Animals or plants. The only Animals that live a long time are so unattractive . The Sea turtles. i don’t think so I mean I don’t mind dancing with him when I go skin diving , But u know I prefer to be a red wood.

Susan Bratton: I loved it and its funny too because now they are discovering that there are is entire group of  different animals and new species completely undiscovered that live in these rain forest canopies in the tops of these red woods and things . Fascinating so we are going to find out all kinds of good stuff we can use to stay young up there. I just know it

Lynda Resnick: well you know we saved 50000 acres of the city and rain forests

Susan Bratton: it was perfect that way thank you

Lynda Resnick: and one of the reasons we were motivated to do that beside the fact that it bucks up to our own plan to keep it pristine and off to the logging and CGS is horrible because that’s one of the ways that they get their income. So we wanted to save this beautiful silvy basin but there are a hundred and thirty four plants  and animals that don’t exist anywhere else on the planet . Because its one of the last remaining rainforests in the world , so you are right and I have a friend who does research in the Amazon and once every six months he brings a shamen in to his woodo I shall two months afterwards

Susan Bratton: Clears out your energy

Lynda Resnick: And I am longing to see the shamen he wants to show up

Susan Bratton: can I come with you? I need to be shamemized

Lynda Resnick: Yes great, its just great

Susan Bratton: I love all that energetic healing stuff . we are Californians.

Lynda Resnick: They are discovering things in the amazon that are just brilliant. You know I am working with pharmaceutical companies to bring the for all of us to live longer

Susan Bratton:well u have saved 50000 acres of  the Gn rainforests.Fiji green now, your Fiji green initiative , Figi bottled water , you are the first carbon negative beverage ever which, u know I off bottled water a couple of years ago. I just carry a si bottle with me and I refill from the tap because I am always in places where the tap water is fine so I just try not to make the trash , but you made some good points about it in the book about you tempered microponoan perspective on bottled water because you are right that not everybody lives in the area where water tastes good, not everybody has the body that can sustain some of the things that are in water , people have compromised systems , people are on the go whatever it might be , so I appreciate that one of the things that you did was make it the first carbon negative beverage. You have also done a lot of other things , you have used biofuels too and carbon offsets for Fiji water , you have created somes leads,green schools , solar manufacturing plants tell us about some of the things that you are most proud of. In the work that you are doing across Roll corporation 

Lynda Resnick: Well we have the second largest solar field in California , where we process our pistachios

Susan Bratton: Ya google is bigger now right

Lynda Resnick: Yes google is

Susan Bratton: Ya they kicked your solar butt

Lynda Resnick: They did .Which is fine .we are happy for the confiscation

Susan Bratton: Exactly. The more the merrier

Lynda Resnick:  Yes and we are taking our offices green one floor at a time, our corporate offices. We just built a precertified platinum preschool in central valley . so those are some of the things we do there. we do a lot for the fijian people. Because the government is kind of renegade and changing all the time and doesn’t invest in infrastructure in their country, so we bring water to about 100 villages in the cg and we plant mango groves that they have another source of income. We are 3% of the cdp of Fiji , which is what  walmart is to America , so we really help sustain that whole country so you talk about sustainability, if you bring medical, educational and water and roads to people , that’s sustainability too, isn’t it?

Susan Bratton: Absolutely. You are sustaining a culture and a beautiful culture at that and Fiji are such a warm and lovely people and I love that hunda the , its their suvichi, the fijian suvichi , oh, have you had that the Hunda

Lynda Resnick: well I don’t know the name of that but I certainly have had wonderful food there, that’s for sure

Susan Bratton: So have you stayed over at tony malins place at nomale

Lynda Resnick: N o I have been to the wakaya club because people that we bought Figi from owned that club and it is heaven on earth . it really is the best place ever and you can go scuba diving day in and day out. It is great.

Susan Bratton: Well you know Tony Robbins has this nomale places on Figi and if you likeyour sharmens you would like the new institute that he built there, its called the oneness institute

Lynda Resnick: Right

Susan Bratton: with

Lynda Resnick: Yes

Susan Bratton: you might want to stop by the next time you go over there. We probably don’t go over there much anymore

Lynda Resnick: Not oo much but I would like to

Susan Bratton: But the next time you have to check out the oneness institute , if you like that energetic and meditative healing and stuff

Lynda Resnick:

Susan Bratton: Me too. I eat it up. Its all interesting to me

Lynda Resnick:Yes

Susan Bratton: I want to switch just a little bit here and go I am reminiscing with you now Lynda . When you were a very a young girl from maybe four to nine years old , you were on the Honan Hardheart children’s hour . your father came out of the movie business , he was the writer for the show

Lynda Resnick: Well, he wrote my material and daddy made the blog which was years later that brought us to California

Susan Bratton: And when I ask you if you didn’t become a fabulous marketer and brand all these commodities or products that might have done or might do in the future , you said , you might go back to those television routes , that you would like to have a talk show, you would like to be a talk show host and focus on young entrepreneurs . tell me a little bit about that. Would be a fun fantasy to do

Lynda Resnick: well u know , we never know what life has in store and writing a book I din’t realize it would lead me down the path that it has . But what I have done is I have a website Rubiesoftheorchard .com and ther is a blog. And in the blog every Tuesday I do ruby Tuesdays because of the economy I interview businesses, small businesses that are doing well inspite of the econmy to inspire people and the hot post takes the mop and soforth but I also have an ask Lynda column so that I invite any entrepreneur to write to me and ask me a marketing question ,and I absolutely sit there and answer every single one of them myself . and I have found such inspiring stories of what people are doing out there or how they are giving back . we have a generation of young people who understands that giving back is the reason we are on the planet. That’s my reason for being here . I don’t need to work anymore, but I do because I want to give it away . I want to help others and so I know how it sounds realistic and sobby but its true

Susan Bratton: But why do you think it sounds sobby . I don’t think it sounds sobby at all

Lynda Resnick: Alright darling what I would love to do is , have a way on a radio show , or television show or whatever  to have to bring these people on to talk about businesses talk about the ways that I recommend that they fix them  or sometimes my whole team goes in and helps people to turn their businesses around and then show the outcome of that , and that’s my dream. Today , I don’t make a lot of long range plans , when you have raised five children and four grandchildren and you have all these businesses and you know that life is qwerky and you never know what is going to happen when you wake up in the morning . so I don’t really plan ahead very much, I just do the best I can every single hour of every day

Susan Bratton: U probably call it roll international corp because you roll with it

Lynda Resnick: Exactly .

Susan Bratton: you told me you wanted to be remembered professionally as a mentor who helped others to find their mission in life and go for it and I think you would be a fantastic . its not even a talk show host . its more like a young entrepreneurs reality television show. I could see you like Tyra Banks u Know, you just got to be fierce

Lynda Resnick: U are right. But they are going to do Shark tank in the Mark Brunette had talked to me about it but it was a reality show but it dint feel right for me. I don’t know if they ever made the show or not but they sort of had an idea like that

Susan Bratton: oh shark tank, I don’t like that angle with, its like that That’s a boy thing

Lynda Resnick: Ya

Susan Bratton: So I haven’t read this book, I just got it from a friend . I do a lot of book swapping , outliars by Malcolm Gladwill

Lynda Resnick: Oh my God, you have to read it

Susan Bratton: Oh I will. Its on my list I have to read Rubies in the orchard

Lynda Resnick: I have one more for you How they decide by john mcclaire

Susan Bratton: Well I like that and I have one for you orie brathman , he wrote sway , the irrational, the iresistable pull of irrational behaviour

Lynda Resnick: Oh alright

Susan Bratton: And you like all that , u like the what motivates us as people to do the stuff that we do because you are a marketer and I am a marketer . I love brain science. I love all those psychology books. I did an interview with orie and he is very good. We applied all the research that he had incollected  to business and marketing . it’s a great show. I will send you the link.

Lynda Resnick: ok great

Susan Bratton: But why did you , u said you  identified with outliars .what was it? You felt like an outliar in your life in a lot of ways

Lynda Resnick: Oh totally I mean, I identified with him completely . you know the fact that I did the television show when I was a small child just gave me the self confidence that noone in the world ever frightened me I could speak to anybody. You know after you work when you are four years old and I was sure I was size one and you work in front of a live audience since you are five years. Every week of your life nothing scares you after that. So that was one of the things I did. Then because I couldn’t go to college, because I only went to a city college for a year , and I started at nineteen with my own business

Susan Bratton: An ad agency by the way and don’t overlook the fact that your own audience are listening right now loves the fact that you started an ad agency

Lynda Resnick: I started an ad agency at nineteen and by the time everybody else was leaving school, I was already established . I was living in the millions I had , u know thirteen employees and so forth and so on . So I got my ten thousand hours of experience that not complied well talks about  that way. The thing it sort of depressed me though because hard work really is back and writing financial derivatives and skimming past right under the nose of the law inorder to get rich quick is no longer whats happening in our society anymore and I think we have a generation out there or two that we have to convince that we have to make money the old fashjion way. You have to work hard. You need all the breaks. Its hard . this is hard

Susan Bratton:  ya time magazine just had an article that said your job is now your biggest asset . you use to think it was your house. You use to think it was your mutual funds but  now its your job. It’s a sobering economy definitely but I think it brings us to ground

Lynda Resnick: Yes

Susan Bratton: You told me a few of your mentors and one of them was Micheal Milken and I know you are on the Milken family foundation , which I dint know much about and in doing my extensive homework for our interview.so I dint ask you the same questions everybody asked including Charlie Rose I mean , come on do your homework. I learned a lot about the Milken family foundation , and I really like this new era of education and the work that they were doing to put the most effective teachers together with the money people and the communities or the what are they called I don’t know the bureaucrats , the state and  local bureucrats manage how the schools gets funded . whatever they are called they are matching their bureaucrats with the effective teachers to actually come up with  new ways to teach the students with the money that is available

Lynda Resnick: But they go around the country and they find the best teachers and schools and rewards and bring them to California . They educate them. They all belong to this network afterwards and spread the word. I mean he has brought so much to education its unbelievable and they came the entire Milken family. And what he has done for prostate cancer is that 350000 men would have died if he hadn’t had the disease and now what his cure the man is a genius

Susan Bratton: Whats his work on faster cures?

Lynda Resnick: Faster cure is where he is trying to move the FDA and all the government agencies , when they have something that’s really going to work  , that they gets into, you know the medical community faster than all the time it usually takes for this to happen , and so

Susan Bratton: They are fast tracking approvals for things. I got it . ok

Lynda Resnick: and they fund prostate cancer research you know hundreds and millions of dollars that they invest in that and make the government to come up with more money so you know Micheal is comfortable in every arena . it’s a tragedy what happened in his life that he went to jail. I met him the day he came out of jail . I never knew him before.

Susan Bratton: But how did you meet him

Lynda Resnick: I had a child with epilepsy and he knew a doctor and he heard that I needed to meet this doctor and he called me. I said you have nothing else to do today but call me about a doctor . I was so impressed

Susan Bratton:Ya

Lynda Resnick:  and we mets shortly thereafter and I just think the world of him

Susan Bratton: Well I was just blown away by the scope of the work that they are doing at the foundation and am so glad that you are part of that and so many of the men in my family has suffered from prostate cancer and the fear that goes with it I mean there are so many things that can happen to men who are diagnosed with it. I don’t remember the name of this website but its googlable. There is a social media website where men can come and share their prostate cancer experiences and contribute so that other men who come behind them and have the discovery of prostate cancer can learn from the men who have gone through different  processes

Lynda Resnick: Absolutely . and go to this website for the prostate cancer foundation

Susan Bratton: Ok

Lynda Resnick: and you can learn so much about the disease. It is. That’s why we are so excited about Pom, because Pom is great for prostate health and you can read the science. Right now we have a huge study going on all around the United States at the male clinic and other places but the first study that was done was kind of with amazing results and its very easy to find it on our website pomwonderful.com

Susan Bratton: and you have invested multiple multiple millions of dollars into funding so much research about this which is you know, because of the pom and its antioxidant capabilities polyfenals

Lynda Resnick: and ofcourse we have been criticized for that but

Susan Bratton: oh that’s ridiculous

Lynda Resnick: I will tell you that if we dint do the research it wouldn’t  be done . Stuart and I invested in places that noone else is interested in

Susan Bratton: right. Who would have thought pomogranates right ?

Lynda Resnick: well exactly but also what we do in the central valley . since we have so many employees in the central valley of california . this is where our crops grow. We send every child whose parents work for us to get a 2.8 average to college . we are building a high school with college there at charter school . we are really excited about that . we just put in the childrens hospital so that’s where we like to invest. So we started with the pomegranate research and the results were so wonderful that pom is really , we feel like its like our pet business . its like giving back the society and I am sure that pom will be a drug  and we are going through, takes years and years and years .but if we could make that happen we could be fantastic. Its 40 percent effective as Viagra too

Susan Bratton: how does that work?

Lynda Resnick: Oh my god, honey , if you don’t know I cant tell you . especially on the radio

Susan Bratton: Its actually a podcast so you can tell me but is it that, what is it that the ingredients in pomegranate form in

Lynda Resnick: blood flow

Susan Bratton: Blood flow. Interesting

Lynda Resnick: yes

Susan Bratton: How does that work?

Lynda Resnick: and you know how blood flow works and if you had better circulation , if you have more robust blood flow then you know , you have better erection

Lynda Resnick: Yes

Susan Bratton: Everybody loves that 

Lynda Resnick: what?

Susan Bratton: Everybody loves that 

Lynda Resnick: ya

Susan Bratton: nobody will want to turn you down on that . I dint realize that is  there some kind of a plaque cleaning agent or something in it

Lynda Resnick: well there is that too that it can actually reduce the plaque in the arteries

Susan Bratton: interesting and I just wanted to finish off with the charitable things that you have done and you also did a really interesting thing were you gave your employees, each of your employees a charitable contribution fund . tell us about that.

Lynda Resnick: its called Roll giving and we give each employee a thousand dollars a year to give to any charity of their choice as long as it isn’t uncle Murfins place and it has to be a 501 c3 and it cant be political or promote any particular religion  and then we match funds upto 5000 dollars . what we are doing now is  putting a service element in with their charitable givings so we will be buiding a house for habitat for humanity in the coming months. But I am really trying to hook up with president Obama’s people on the services that they are doing and offered  some of our employees time and energy to giving back to nonprofits and soforth

Susan Bratton: I love it. You are really in the greening of your business and the philanthropy that you bring all the way to every employee of your business both with money and now time. These are all the things that are in the rubies of the orchard . you talk about different ways in that organizations and corporations can be accountable, take responsibility and take back in all these different ways and I think that’s probably the thing that I appreciated out of the whole book was the conversations that you had about that.

Lynda Resnick: Yes. A lot of people come to work for us because of what we do in the charitable field .but its nice to hear

Susan Bratton: why it really cares about that.18 to 28 year olds . they are seeking careers with corporations that care 

Lynda Resnick: I know

Susan Bratton: It’s the way to attract the best ones .its a competitive advantage

Lynda Resnick: Susan did you know that we do everything in house

Susan Bratton: I did. It was funny. One of my questions we are out of time now.i am having fun now But one of my questions was I quoted from the book “when I hire people full time from the agency world , we in doctronate them and teach them our ways ” and I thought oh my god so many people from the agency world listened to the show . that was one of the questions I thought to ask you

Lynda Resnick:  is it too late to answer?

Susan Bratton: Heck no. lets just keep it rolling and go ahead. Everybody wants to know

Lynda Resnick: yes. Because I started in advertising I think I brought that discipline to every businesses that we had started or purchased , so our inhouse creative team developed all of the pom advertising, cg advertising , Teleflora and so forth . that you see we even do our own commercials . we don’t direct them, but we conceive them our thought that so successful for Teleflora this last super bowl was  doneby my inhouse creatives . our PR team won the best in house PR in the United States this year. I am very proud of what they have done.But when you know you have products that are true value and a selling proposition you cant get great impresses one of the unsung heroes of media so far as I am concerned . I think the corporate America gets it how important really is in your mix and we make a huge commitment to that we do 2100 events a year . you know we put our products in the hands of the people that are going to be the influences and it worked 

Susan Bratton: well I have heard that there are three kinds of media now. There is ofcourse paid media, there is social media and there is earned media .and someone recently made the proclamation that those are the three kinds of media. I mean I am sure that there is more, but I liked that was good wrap up for me 

Lynda Resnick:  Yes its lovely

Susan Bratton: Perfect. Well Lynda thank you so much for sharing your time and I know that rubies in the orchard will be a booming success ,  its beautifully written, very fun to read ,very inspirational as has this interview been for me with you

Lynda Resnick:   thank you I loved the opportunity

Susan Bratton: it was my pleasure

Lynda Resnick:  Have a great day

Susan Bratton: thank you . you just got to meet Lynda Resnick  , co-chairman of Roll International corp.i hope you enjoyed it as much as I did and got some inspiration from it as well. I am your host Susan Bratton and I look forward to connecting with you next week. Have a great day