This episode features an interview with Rolfe Arnhym '53, a Chair for Vistage, the world’s largest and most comprehensive executive coaching organization for small and midsize businesses. There, he works with CEOs and executives to develop and add to their professional skill sets and grow as business people.
This episode features an interview with Rolfe Arnhym ‘53, a Chair for Vistage, the world’s largest and most comprehensive executive coaching organization for small and midsize businesses with $1 million to $1 billion in revenue.
As a Vistage Chair, Rolfe mentors numerous business leaders in the community through three groups he oversees. He has served every community in his personal and professional life with a focus on service to others before oneself, and making each community better for future generations. Rolfe is a West Point graduate and retired Army officer with a distinguished 21-year military career, including two combat tours in Vietnam and commanding an Infantry Brigade in the Army Reserve. He retired with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, and later as a Colonel in the Reserves. Rolfe has held numerous significant leadership positions including serving as CEO of the Pasadena, Long Beach, Palm Springs, and Beverly Hills Chambers of Commerce from 1978-1999.
In this episode of On Point, Rolfe talks about how he works at Vistage with CEOs and executives to develop and add to their professional skill sets and grow as business people. He provides insight on his highly varied career, and what inspired him to write a book for readers to gain insights into mentorship and coaching, being able to walk away with multiple calls to action. Rolfe also touches on the power of the Chamber of Commerce as an important resource to help you succeed in business, and sheds light on the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of moving the Army versus Navy game across the nation.
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“I find a general weakness right now in terms of people holding themselves accountable. They are ready to blame almost anybody else's circumstance, pin the tail on some other’s donkey; never-mind holding their people accountable. I find that internally and I worked very, very hard on this to make sure to help people establish core values. Some would call it a fundamentals and in my book, the number one core value is mutual respect, which is a fast way of saying, ‘treat others as you would have them treat you’, which makes a huge difference.” - Rolfe Arnhym
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(02:22) Rolfe’s role at Vistage
(03:54) Moving the Army v. Navy game across the nation
(11:44) Impact the Army v. Navy game left on the West Coast
(14:38) Using the Army v. Navy game as a West Point marketing initiative
(17:42) Why Rolfe wrote Start Everything, Finish Nothing: The Curse of Modern Management
(19:52) Inviting the Mayor of Moscow to Beverly Hills
(24:49) Transitioning out of the military
(26:04) Creating the MILES system
(27:32) The Chamber of Commerce as a career path
(30:27) Rolfe’s relationship with West Point
(36:58) Lessons learned from over the years
(40:04) Life as a mentor
(41:37) How the Chamber of Commerce can help you
(44:55) Final thoughts
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West Point Association of Graduates
[00:00:00] Narrator: Hello and welcome to On Point.
This episode features an interview with Rolfe Arnhym, a Chair of Vistage, the world’s largest and most comprehensive executive coaching organization for small and midsize businesses with $1 million to $1 billion in revenue.
As a Vistage Chair, Rolfe mentors numerous business leaders in the community through three groups he oversees. He has served every community in his personal and professional life with a focus on service to others before self, and making each community better for future generations. Rolfe is a West Point graduate and retired Army officer with a distinguished 21-year military career, including two combat tours in Vietnam and commanding an Infantry Brigade in the Army Reserve. He retired with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, and later as a Colonel in the Reserves. Rolfe has held numerous significant leadership positions including serving as CEO of the Pasadena, Long Beach, Palm Springs, and Beverly Hills Chambers of Commerce from 1978-1999.
In this episode of On Point, Rolfe talks about how he works at Vistage with CEOs and executives to develop and add to their professional skill sets and grow as business people. He provides insight on his highly varied career, and what inspired him to write a book for readers to gain insights into mentorship and coaching, being able to walk away with multiple calls to action. Rolfe also touches on the power of the Chamber of Commerce as an important resource to help you succeed in business, and sheds light on the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of moving the Army versus Navy game across the nation.
Now, please enjoy this interview between Rolfe Arnhym, and your host Ian Faison.
[00:01:59] Ian Faison: Welcome to [00:02:00] On Point. I’m Ian Faison, CEO of Caspian studios. And today I am joined by a very special guest Rolfe Arnyhum.
[00:02:07] Rolfe Arnhym: Good to see you. Good afternoon. Yeah. Great
[00:02:09] Ian Faison: to have you on the show, excited to chat about business, about west point, about how you brought the army Navy game to California, and much, much more.
[00:02:20] Ian Faison: So before we get into all that, can you tell me a little bit about your current role at. I'm
[00:02:25] Rolfe Arnhym: currently a chair for the Vistage international. I have three groups that are a combination of a CEO's and senior executives for a total of 58 under a wing that I coach and mentor. I try to help them to not only develop an add to their professional skillsets, but I try to help them.
[00:02:45] Rolfe Arnhym: Uh, grow their business at the same time, help them to make better decisions. The way we do that is I have sessions both as a group and one-on-one once a month where I ask them pretty deep questions in a [00:03:00] confidential environment. When we're in a group meeting as sort of like a think tank and we push them to be totally transparent to share with us what their problems are, and then we help them to make better and faster decisions.
[00:03:12] Rolfe Arnhym: At the end of the day, I hold them. What I can tell you is that when I did my book start, everything finished, nothing. I dedicated it to my Vistage members for their unintended contribution. I love
[00:03:25] Ian Faison: that. Always unintended consequences and contributions. Whenever you're working with anyone and we'll get into some of the Vistage lessons here later, you already mentioned your book, which I will link up in the show notes.
[00:03:36] Ian Faison: And I highly recommend everybody to check out. Starting off, you wrote a book, you did something very difficult in writing a book. Sure. But before that you did something even more difficult that every west point grad knows, which is you moved the army Navy. So tell me about what was going on at the time.
[00:03:53] Ian Faison: What were you doing? Why the heck did you get this crazy idea to move the army Navy game?
[00:03:58] Rolfe Arnhym: Well, at the time I was the [00:04:00] CEO of the Pasadena chamber of commerce. And my mission really was to move Pasadena from a one event per year. To multiple events and activity to sort of ramp up business activity. And so I saw the rose bowl as an opportunity to do that.
[00:04:17] Rolfe Arnhym: And so I really went down two tracks, but the first track, the army Navy game, we were at home with a group of people watching the army Navy game and. 1981 and I just made a frivolous comment and I said, you know, the game should really move around the country. There. The two academies belong to our nation.
[00:04:34] Rolfe Arnhym: It's a shame for it to be totally held in, in Philadelphia. And so somebody said to me, it can't be done. That's the wrong thing to say to me. And as a matter of factors in chapter nine, So I set about putting a proposal together and the selling proposition was pretty basic from the Academy's perspective.
[00:04:53] Rolfe Arnhym: They were losing attendance in Philadelphia and they was losing a lot of interest Philadelphia really at that time, [00:05:00] just saw it as another event. They also both academies were having a difficult time with their brand west of the Mississippi. And it was difficult at best to attract qualified candidates for both the military academy and the Naval academy west of the Mississippi.
[00:05:16] Rolfe Arnhym: So I saw that as an admissions challenge. And so I put a proposal together and by virtue of some strong relationships, I was able to get access to the top people in our country, uh, starting with the secretary of defense, the secretary of the. The secretary of the air force, the two superintendents and I made my case to characterize how advantageous it would be for them to move the game 10,000 people across the country and back again, and conducted in the rose bowl from a city of Pasadena perspective.
[00:05:50] Rolfe Arnhym: It was a huge Bonanza because not only would we bring a lot of people in. Pasadena area, but it'd be another major event with enormous economic impact.
[00:05:59] Ian Faison: Obviously the, [00:06:00] you know, that the game had been going for a long time at that point, had it ever moved anywhere close to the west
[00:06:05] Rolfe Arnhym: coast? No one had not.
[00:06:07] Rolfe Arnhym: This is the first time ever. It turned out to be the largest, a movement and peace time history where a 10,000 people had to be moved from both west point Annapolis to the Pasadena area. Nevermind housing fees. Conduct a parade conduct events. It was enormous $6 million undertaking to make all of that happen.
[00:06:27] Rolfe Arnhym: And everybody candidly thought I was totally crazy. What was interesting about it is that, um, I got the go ahead for this thing in February of 1983, with the idea that the game would be played by on a Saturday and the first week of. That was a pretty tight timeline to raise $6 million and to put together all of the administration and logistics to make it happen.
[00:06:52] Rolfe Arnhym: So I really initially had not envisaged the thing happening at 83. I figured, oh, shoot, that'll happen downstream, wrong. They gave me the go ahead. What was [00:07:00] weird? Is that a less than two months later, they were having the basketball playoffs in Albuquerque, New Mexico. And the various TV stations were battling over, who was going to traditional games, Penn, Penn, state, and USC.
[00:07:15] Rolfe Arnhym: And so UCLA Alon again, and they made a rather strange conclusion instead of the game being played on the first Saturday in December, they moved it to a Friday after Thanksgiving, which really threw a major monkey wrench in number one, it cut a week. Number two, a completely upset by a sweetheart deal because I had been successful in meeting with the chairman of the board and the president of United airlines and got a sweetheart deal to move all of the cadets and all the midshipmen across country and back.
[00:07:45] Rolfe Arnhym: Well, that blew up because now I'm looking at a Thanksgiving weekend. So I really had to scramble to get the air put together. And then I had to scrap. To find places for everybody to stay rather. And the secretary of the Navy was not my best friend [00:08:00] because he was a native of Philadelphia and thought I was totally the enemy.
[00:08:03] Rolfe Arnhym: He threw a couple of ranches at me and said, no, you're going to put at least a thousand cadets in a thousand midshipman and hotels there's costs. But the rest of them, you know, could go out to family homes. And I was befriended with a sports editor for CBS sports and loss Lausanne. He got me on TV and I made this plea about how would you like to have a cadet or a midshipman in your home over the Thanksgiving holidays?
[00:08:28] Rolfe Arnhym: Holy smoke. The thing blew up completely and we were oversubscribed. In terms of people that wanted a house cadets and men shipment, which had a very long lasting impact as more weddings came out of that more longstanding friendships came out of it. But then I had a problem. I had to feed 2000 cadets and Mitsubishi was stuck in a hotel.
[00:08:47] Rolfe Arnhym: I went back on TV and was able to get them all out for Thanksgiving dinner.
[00:08:52] Ian Faison: And adjusting for inflation. You're talking about this would be like current day, over $17 million, you know, 6 million back then. But [00:09:00] I mean, you're talking, this is a massive amount of money. It
[00:09:02] Rolfe Arnhym: gets worse. I had to raise money and parallel with Peter Ueberroth and the Los Angeles, 1984 Olympic games.
[00:09:10] Rolfe Arnhym: He was getting cash. I was getting pledged. Which boomerang later on. So, uh, people could see putting up cash to support the Olympics, which was going to be ongoing, you know, for several weeks, this game is, you know, four hours and boom gone. What happened on the Monday after the game, Senator Proxmire of Wisconsin came out and said, I'd certainly liked to know how many federal dollars were spent on this and called for a GAO investigation.
[00:09:38] Rolfe Arnhym: So the LA times comes out Monday morning, says army Navy game under investigator. Holy cow, that completely froze all of my pledges, which really threw a major monkey wrench into stuff. So I had to double back and figure out, okay, how am I going to pay all of this? At what
[00:09:54] Ian Faison: point were you like maybe this isn't worth it
[00:09:56] Rolfe Arnhym: probably the day that they were all in the air and I was [00:10:00] scrambling to pull all the pieces together.
[00:10:02] Rolfe Arnhym: And what was really bizarre is that we were clicking along. People were in the air and I got a phone call from the folks back at west point, I had to charter out cause they didn't have United airlines totally under control. The charter airline for a bunch of cadets was sitting on the runway in a new.
[00:10:19] Rolfe Arnhym: And the airline had gone bankrupt and they demanded cash now, before they would take off. And they were looking for something like 200,000 bucks, which I did not have. And I went into a major scramble. Don't ask me how I found the money, wired it. And instead of being earlier in the scheme of things, they were at the end and got there in time.
[00:10:41] Rolfe Arnhym: But that was frightening.
[00:10:43] Ian Faison: You know, putting together an event of any kind is always crazy. Moving the army Navy game, obviously. With all the monkey wrenches and all that stuff seem to be as crazy of an idea as you could get. But I'm sure that to the cadets, you're used to going to different places in the [00:11:00] summer or going to airborne school, you get on a plane, you go do all this stuff.
[00:11:03] Ian Faison: There's process for all that, for going to army Navy game down in Philadelphia, you have the boomerang buses, all that sort of stuff. You don't have to house everybody. You send everybody, you drive them down and you drive them back, essentially. It's just, you know, you gotta pay for the buses, but when you talk about like the level of complexity and all this sort of stuff, it starts to make sense.
[00:11:22] Ian Faison: I, no one had ever done it before to figure that out. But after you finished it and after you did it and all of the, you know, with the lawsuits and all the other crazy stuff, and you're sitting there and like you said, all of the unintended consequences, all of the things that came out. I mean, like, what did that feel like after it was done and dusted and you were like, Hey, we did this, this had an impact.
[00:11:43] Ian Faison: And we got to show west point to a group of people that had never seen it like that. People in LA and Southern California.
[00:11:51] Rolfe Arnhym: I think that, uh, you know, after being sued by the secretary of the Navy and not, not a lot of people can lay claim to that for the residual monies, I [00:12:00] did reflect back and there were several things.
[00:12:01] Rolfe Arnhym: Number one, the enormous amount of Goodwill. In Pasadena, which continues to this day, the relationships which continue to this day, there is now a time capsule in a bench, right in front of the rose bowl. Nobody will ever forget that the army Navy game was not there. Every cadet, midshipman that was involved in those four classes.
[00:12:19] Rolfe Arnhym: I run into people all the time that recalled a thing with fond memories, from their perspective. Perfectly. We got them out there. We had what I call zip code commanders, meet them in various locations around the Los Angeles area, rather than having families meet him at the airport. I had them dispersed at shopping centers and schools brought the buses to them.
[00:12:40] Rolfe Arnhym: Families picked him up, took him to their home, shuttled them back and forth. It almost became a family event. I gave him a night at Disney. I went out to Disney and I said, I'd like to shut the park down. They said, you're outta here. Well, I'd run a study. And I found that for the last four years, their attendance, that particular night was in the dumper.
[00:12:58] Rolfe Arnhym: I told them I could double it. And they said, you're [00:13:00] crazy. That's to give me a chance they did. And we tripled it. We had a major event with Bob hope, which with a combined glee clubs of the two academies huge event, we had a series of major activities of the entire city was caught up in it. I go back and they still remember the army Navy game and Pasadena as do a lot of graduates.
[00:13:19] Rolfe Arnhym: So they don't see any more. You know what happened behind the scenes? They don't see that I got a phone call at three o'clock in the morning from the police department. My executive system's a completely spaced out. I had no idea where the hell she was. I mean, it was just, you know, that kind of a time
[00:13:34] Ian Faison: I was talking to someone who is at Disney back when they had, I think it was, um, Michael Phelps.
[00:13:39] Ian Faison: They wanted to set up a pool at Disneyland to have Michael Phelps race, someone at Disneyland. I don't know. It might've been a shark or something like that, but anyways, they're talking about. And you think you're like, well, you know, you put a pool in and it's not that big a thing it's like, yeah. But what happens if you spill a million gallons of water in Disneyland or whatever, you start to think of the second and third and fourth order [00:14:00] events.
[00:14:00] Ian Faison: And obviously crisis planning works that way, but like marketing works the other way, too. I know. As, as a kid who grew up in Oakland, California, I never met a west point cadet ever. I didn't even know west point existed until. Uh, sophomore in high school and I was on the east coast visiting my cousins and my uncle, my dad cornered me and her like, Hey, you should apply to us bond.
[00:14:20] Ian Faison: I'm like, what is that? And like, that's just how it is. Like on the west coast. There's a lot of people who don't know that. And in order to build those relationships, you have to be there in person. Right. And obviously like today we have a very digital economy and all that sort of stuff. But back then, like if you weren't on TV or if you weren't there in person or on the radio, you weren't going to get seen.
[00:14:41] Ian Faison: Putting west point cadets out in front of people out on the streets doing that is a huge marketing initiative for the.
[00:14:49] Rolfe Arnhym: To your point and you make an excellent one. It rained like to beat the band the night before the game. And so I thought that was going to really put a damper on the event at Disney. [00:15:00] I can tell you I was out there.
[00:15:01] Rolfe Arnhym: They were having a blast rain, not withstanding at Disney with friends. And we had something like 25,000 people out there. And I was there at three o'clock in the morning when it stopped. My biggest fear of the next day was what was that going to do to the. Because they have the traditional March on for the core cadets and the brigade of midshipmen, the Philadelphian, everybody loves and the commandant and a bunch of us were standing around on the field and looked at the field and said, there's no way we can have a March on.
[00:15:27] Rolfe Arnhym: I thought you hikes, there goes a major piece out of this big puzzle. What are we going to do? Well, that's what relationships are all about. I called my buddies on the TV stations in LA. Again, they put me on the. And they said, how would you like to watch a parade of the core cadets and the brigade of midshipmen from downtown Pasadena to the rose bowl, over a million people showed up.
[00:15:48] Rolfe Arnhym: So instead of some 80,000 people watching a March. It was on TV with over a million people, lining the streets. So the core cadets couldn't have been happier. And so what, so it was a, a [00:16:00] mile and changed down to the rose bowl, but it had an enormous impact, but it's one of those things where I guess that's where I benchmark myself.
[00:16:07] Rolfe Arnhym: I tend to figure it out. I don't have time for people that can't figure it out and see obstacles. It made a huge impact on the city of Los Angeles, not just Pasadena. And that was the biggest thing and on TV and.
[00:16:20] Ian Faison: One, I think you, at the time you were retired from the army, you'd been there, done that. You'd seen it all from that perspective, you had some cache, you weren't just a random person trying to rub two sticks together.
[00:16:33] Ian Faison: You were in a role that obviously could do this, and you were kind of the perfect connection point between west point as a grad and retired army officer. So I think you could pull that stuff together. It seems like. You called in every favor. And I know that that's like a really scary thing for entrepreneurs and business leaders.
[00:16:49] Ian Faison: When you have that moment in time where you're like, I know that I am not going to do this alone. I can't do it alone. I got a call in every favor. What was that experience like for [00:17:00] you to have to call in all those favors and know that you got to rely on your brothers and sisters to help you out?
[00:17:06] Rolfe Arnhym: It's very mixed and I tried very hard not to make it about me, but about.
[00:17:11] Rolfe Arnhym: And the important role that they were playing. I couldn't focus on, Hey, I got a problem. I had to make it, we have a problem. And, uh, there are a lot of moving pieces here, and this is really about the two academies and it's about their brand and their visibility in the marketplace. And so you're not doing this for me, you're doing this for the military academies.
[00:17:29] Rolfe Arnhym: And I think that's what resonated as a result of that. I could see kind of a Glint in their eye that they wanted to be part of something that was bigger than all that. And so you
[00:17:38] Ian Faison: wrote a book called start everything, finish nothing. The curse of modern management, obviously a bunch of lessons from that book.
[00:17:48] Ian Faison: And just from leadership in general, you've been doing this a long time west point class of 53. I'm curious. Why did you write the book and why did you feel like you had stuff that you need to do?
[00:17:58] Rolfe Arnhym: As a function of [00:18:00] mentoring, coaching, and facilitating meetings with my CEOs and senior executives, my involvement with various community-based organizations I find, and this is not something that I invented per se, but storytelling more often than not carries the day.
[00:18:17] Rolfe Arnhym: And so when we had a particular situation, I always would find something in my. That was built around a story. And so my guys were pushing my buttons about doing a book and I told them, I just don't have the time for this. And it went on and on again. And so I just let it drift. And then after a while I started thinking, well, what would I call this book?
[00:18:36] Rolfe Arnhym: And I realized that when I listened to them and I listened to myself every day, you start all these things, you know, finish the thing. So I wrote that down then as a function of time, I said, okay, what would I build around it? And so I created a page. For each year of what I thought would be the various chapters of the book.
[00:18:56] Rolfe Arnhym: And so I wandered around really for quite a period of time and just sort of [00:19:00] plugging in holes along the way. But I was determined to write a book that was more actionable. And so there are all kinds of books out there and they tend to have only one action line associated with whether it's good to grade in search of excellence.
[00:19:13] Rolfe Arnhym: You'd go on and on again with a lot of great business books that are out there, but it was always one lesson. One takeaway said, no, let's not. In my case, I wanted multiple, uh, calls to action. So as a case in point, I've got chapters that speak about a can't be done decided to side accountable. Dealing with change loyalty and commitment, changing careers, all of those things are very actionable.
[00:19:37] Rolfe Arnhym: And as a result of that, you can pick up that book and just follow the chapter headings. And you've got a ladder to success if you will, but it's all built around stories. One of the craziest stories is I was in my office in Beverly Hills. I got a phone call from the office of the mayor of mine. And to get a visa, a dignitary has got to get an invitation somehow, and I have no [00:20:00] idea how this happened, but nevermind.
[00:20:01] Rolfe Arnhym: I had shown up in a fashion magazine in Moscow. It's another story. And, uh, so they called me and asked if I would invite the mayor of Moscow to Beverly Hills. Okay. That's not a pretty cool. I said, sure. Why not? Well, the next thing that happens of course, is. I've got to explain that to my board, to the city council, they look at me, Ana, what did you just do?
[00:20:20] Rolfe Arnhym: And I said, I guess I invited the mayor of Moscow. And then they get a call a little bit later from them. And they want to know if, and I hate to use that example right now with what's going on in Ukraine. But short story is that he asked if he could bring a couple of business associates and some governmental people.
[00:20:34] Rolfe Arnhym: The next thing I know, here's an Aeroflot special flight hidden for the city and oh my gosh, 250 Russians are inbound to Beverly. And they brought with them a TV crew with a drop dead gorgeous blonde anchor. And we're about to get interviewed and she could not have been more stoic, just like a pile of ice.
[00:20:55] Rolfe Arnhym: And I didn't know what. What happened is that with that many people coming, I decided to [00:21:00] put them together in the Beverly Hilton, all of those people, and then do a simulcast to Moscow. And so in addition to the mayor of Moscow, whose his agenda was to visit the Playboy mansion, he didn't have all this other stuff going on in his head.
[00:21:12] Rolfe Arnhym: So all these people, we've got 250 Russians, a bunch of business people from the Los Angeles area. So they're interviewing me before all of this, and it was just so intimidating to be looking at it. Couple of inches apart. I don't know what made me say it, but I leaned into her and I said, would you like to defect?
[00:21:29] Rolfe Arnhym: Well, holy cow, I don't know how that worked, but she started smiling. I started smiling, literally broke the ice. That's sort of, my mantra is again, try to figure your way out through using humor to get out of a bad situation. And you know, the cool thing that we forget about that is, was really about people not.
[00:21:49] Rolfe Arnhym: Nobody was thinking about all the policy issues. When this guy went up to visit the Playboy mansion, nobody was thinking about that when we were all in the room, talking together about this. Well, I [00:22:00] think
[00:22:00] Ian Faison: it speaks to another thing, which I think you've leveraged in your career, which is, you know, you gotta fight with what you have and when you're in LA, when you're in Pasadena, when you're near Hollywood, it's like, if you have Bob hope down the road, you gotta use Bob hope.
[00:22:14] Ian Faison: If you have whatever it is at your disposal, you have to use those things. And I think that so often whether it's entrepreneurs or business leaders, don't realize what they have around. Make sure chefs, he tells a story about when he was in China for the Olympics. And he sat down with a group of Chinese business, men and diplomats and different things.
[00:22:32] Ian Faison: And they asked him questions about west point for like 30 minutes, instead of about the team team USA. It's just one of those things that I think in the west point community, it's like, we have a certain amount of perhaps worldliness that we don't necessarily always realize that can be an advantage.
[00:22:47] Rolfe Arnhym: Yeah. And to think about him, you know what? I go back to west point. I think that struck me. There was very competitive. You're not as good as you think you are. There are a lot of people that are a lot better than you are by show up for gymnastics. And [00:23:00] it's exactly like the Olympics, every exercise that you do, you can watch in the Olympics and I'm sitting there on the floor, watching these guys flying over the stuff.
[00:23:08] Rolfe Arnhym: Now look at us. There's no way in the world that I can do that. And yet, because it's progressive, ultimately you're able to accomplish. And so it comes back to this philosophy. Don't tell yourself something can't be done.
[00:23:20] Ian Faison: Yeah. It's a great point. As a business leader, you have that mindset of it can be done because you've seen and done all that stuff at west point or in the army or whatever.
[00:23:30] Ian Faison: Nothing in business is, is probably going to be anywhere near as hard as. The ICT for some of us, for those of us who, who perhaps are not as good on whatever parallel bars or whatever those
[00:23:41] Rolfe Arnhym: things are called. Well, when it teaches you at the academy is a process which is important and a certain amount of discipline, and you carry that through.
[00:23:50] Rolfe Arnhym: Uh, commitment, but I continuously look for opportunities not only to do better myself, but for others to be better. I tend to tackle things that nobody else wants to do. I wound [00:24:00] up chairing the Orlando Centennial because nobody would do it. I was able to move a UCLA out of the Coliseum into the rose bowl because somebody said that couldn't be done and I had to do it over poor Tom.
[00:24:11] Rolfe Arnhym: Bradley's a dead body. The mayor of Los Angeles at the time was fighting at vigorous. At the time UCLA or their average season ticket was around 32,000, not good. And they wanted to move it dramatically. And I said, I'll take it to 55 in five years. And we took it there and won yet.
[00:24:29] Ian Faison: I'm curious, you've changed careers a few times, obviously.
[00:24:33] Ian Faison: And after spending 20 years in the army, there's a lot of folks who are women and men that just say, you know what? I think I'm just going to take up gardening and breast my knees for a while. Whereas you obviously want the opposite direction. How did that transition out of the military? Go for you as someone who, who.
[00:24:50] Ian Faison: I was retired already. And then now going and finding a second career. And how the heck did you get into
[00:24:56] Rolfe Arnhym: the career? You did well, you know, clearly it's a huge cultural shift [00:25:00] and I'm on my last assignment. I was living in the civilian community, if you will, and got to know my neighbors, which is uncommon, you do that in the military.
[00:25:11] Rolfe Arnhym: It doesn't happen quite so much in civilian left. I got to know my neighbors and through various discussions with some of the neighbors and this at the time was in Orlando, or they were talking then about somebody to head up the bicentennial and the city Centennial. And they asked me the question, would you do that?
[00:25:28] Rolfe Arnhym: And I said, well, I'm on active duty. And ultimately I'll be reassigned going someplace else. And they said, what if we found you a job? And I said, cool, will you find me a job? And. And so to the chagrin of my wife, after over 20 years, I made that shift and I leveraged that into a fair amount of visibility.
[00:25:47] Rolfe Arnhym: It opened up other opportunities. They gave me a chance to be president of a small consulting company that morphed into a contract with a major company in Pasadena, California, where they were in competition. [00:26:00] Interestingly enough, With it and T to develop a series of, uh, training devices, utilizing laser technology to get an indication of hit, they won the.
[00:26:10] Rolfe Arnhym: Offered me a job to come out to California and be co-program manager. And we burst a system which is all over the army today in the Marine Corps called a mile system. It's a made up word. It's totally garbage speak. And I'm a classmate of mine came up with that name. We were naming it for somebody who was my boss.
[00:26:27] Rolfe Arnhym: We didn't think very highly of, we struggled with the middle of initial. We came up with garbage, speak that as it turned out, we had no idea that we came up with the word miles. It's a Greek word, me lace for Greek soldier. No. You put a laser eye safe laser on the Army's family of direct fire weapons to get an indication of it.
[00:26:45] Rolfe Arnhym: I came up with a name. I took it through a research and development, the first couple of phases, and I had the breadboard models still in my garage. Oh
[00:26:54] Ian Faison: my gosh. That's so funny. So it doesn't stand for multiple integrated laser engagement system. It's the [00:27:00]
[00:27:00] Rolfe Arnhym: correct word? It was called laser engagements. We were trying to put a Y in there to didn't work.
[00:27:06] Rolfe Arnhym: So we had to run with the
[00:27:08] Ian Faison: I that's too funny. That's a great story. I'm curious, like, how did you know that being involved in the chamber of commerce, which is something you did a few times in your career? Like, how did you know that was a career path? That you wanted to go down? What was
[00:27:23] Rolfe Arnhym: it about that? I'm not sure how I got into it.
[00:27:26] Rolfe Arnhym: Initially accepted. I met some people that were involved in the chamber of commerce, befriended them. I learned a little bit about it. And so when the opportunity came to me, it just struck me that, uh, chambers of commerce offered an opportunity to interact with the business community. And if I was going to find my way, that would be a.
[00:27:45] Rolfe Arnhym: To determine what my ultimate business career was going to look like. So I did not know precisely where it was going to lead, but I realized pretty quickly that it provided a stairway or a ladder or whatever your bridge, whatever you will. And I just, that [00:28:00] struck me as a good path to. Learn the members of the business community and figure what was out there for me.
[00:28:06] Rolfe Arnhym: It's a mixed blessing. You could try to sell yourself as something, or you'll look for an opportunity and ask yourself, is that a good one for me? And of course later on, I went on to be the CEO of four different chambers of commerce. Initially Pasadena, then. Palm Springs. And ultimately Beverly Hills in their role is pretty simple.
[00:28:24] Rolfe Arnhym: And that is to establish relationships within the business community act as advocates for business, meaning help them through a difficult legislative issues. And so you represent them at the city county and a state level to protect them from either some law that's going to come down or some regulation that's going to impact the cost of doing business.
[00:28:44] Rolfe Arnhym: And I found myself in behalf of all. As a spokesman and their behalf at every level. And I think that visibility sorta led later on to a, something, which was really a huge blessing. And that was, I was in California and at the time in [00:29:00] Palm Springs and was asked by the governor, if I would serve on what was then called the California Nevada SuperSpeed train commission.
[00:29:07] Rolfe Arnhym: So technically I'm a commissioner in the state of California. That was a great assignment by the way. And I'm the one that came up with a design for a high-speed rail system for the Pacific Southwest, not simply a gambler special from Las Vegas to California, which was driving the hotel industry bananas.
[00:29:26] Rolfe Arnhym: They did not want to have a high-speed exit out of California. So there were all kinds of roadblocks, but the short story is on one of those trips. The commission knew that I had taken German at west point because I had an excellent instructor. I gained. And so we get over there and they asked me if I'll give the welcoming talk to the German engineers, which I was able to do, but I was sweating bullets because I was trying to pull words out of my head as fast as I could, but somehow it worked and I became their instant buddy.
[00:29:56] Rolfe Arnhym: Oh my God. The guy speaks German.
[00:29:58] Ian Faison: That's incredible. [00:30:00] What's your relationship like with the academy? Obviously you've been involved with it for a long time. It seems like it keeps coming up throughout your career and it's been an ever steady presence. I think
[00:30:11] Rolfe Arnhym: the army Navy game sorta did it for me. And it sorta reenergize me asking myself the question and maybe it was guilt.
[00:30:18] Rolfe Arnhym: I don't know because they didn't get all the money that they wanted, uh, out of the game because we couldn't collect on all the pledges, nevermind the lawsuit downstream, which by the way, I had to use my one year of law at Western. To get me through the district court in Los Angeles and through the ninth circuit court of appeal.
[00:30:37] Rolfe Arnhym: And when on a stupid technicality, which I'm not very proud of, but at least they didn't nail me for a couple of million bucks. I felt that I owed the academy and I needed to make up that shortfall and just call a pure and simple guilt. So I've dedicated myself ever since to try to bring people up to west point that are willing to make a contribution.
[00:30:57] Rolfe Arnhym: And the good news is I've been successful. I've been [00:31:00] fortunate with my business. And so I've made contributions. They'll never be a building up there. I can't pass that muster, nevermind a statue. But the short story is through that vehicle, I've been able to bring a lot of support to west point, both monetarily and in many other ways.
[00:31:15] Rolfe Arnhym: And so I feel that gradually over the years, I'm refilling that.
[00:31:19] Ian Faison: That's really cool. I feel like there's a lot of awareness and introductions and relationships and obviously money that west point needs at any given time. And I think that so often we feel somebody else's going to donate the gigantic building or the new thing, but like, Pasadena is introducing a new generation of people to west point and to Annapolis, that sort of stuff.
[00:31:47] Ian Faison: So one of the reasons why we excited to do this podcast and some of the other content that we're working on is to just share like all of these different facets of. Westpoint is working on at any given time, what [00:32:00] AIG is working on. And I think that for cadets, when you're there in the moment, you just get the benefits of what's going on.
[00:32:06] Ian Faison: You don't know anything, you just know you're going to Pasadena for army Navy. You'd have no idea what's going on behind the scenes. Once you get out, you realize you're like, oh, there's actually people working on all these things. And that requires connections and effort and energy and dollars and all that stuff.
[00:32:20] Ian Faison: But it's one of the things that I think separates. That's a great leaders who are able to crawl those resources and point people in the right direction. And obviously you've been doing that for a long time. Well,
I,
[00:32:31] Rolfe Arnhym: you know, I think if there is no point that I want to make this probably more important to me, it's never about me really.
[00:32:37] Rolfe Arnhym: And that's why the lessons learned. I don't want people to know. To repeat the mistakes that I made. And so I'm dedicating myself in that direction, you know, try the payback to west point in a sounds, a little of a Greicius. But after the army Navy game, it struck me that the least they could do in Pasadena was to put up a statue of me at the rose bowl.
[00:32:54] Rolfe Arnhym: And I wanted it to be three times the size of Saddam Hussein, because they didn't want it to fall down easily. And I [00:33:00] recognized that don't make it about yourself. I reached out to them and say, you know, what I'd like to do is I'd like to put in place a bench in a time capsule to express appreciation to the city of Pasadena and on the rose bowl for hosting the army Navy game and the cadets and midshipmen in your homes.
[00:33:14] Rolfe Arnhym: You know what? Listen, 30 days, boom. It was approved. That's simple. And it'll be open on the 25th of November of 1983, where there's a time capsule and it's now become a focal point. For visitors, because they've added to that. They put another bench in place to commemorate the 1944 rose bowl game, which was played at duke because of world war II and a statue.
[00:33:39] Rolfe Arnhym: And so all of that is very synergistic and it's about a thousand feet. Give or take from the entrance to the bowl. You cannot miss it without knowing that the army Navy game.
[00:33:49] Ian Faison: That's amazing. So I was super involved in like fan groups for the basketball team and for the football team when I was there.
[00:33:55] Ian Faison: And one of the big reasons that I wanted to do that and why I was super involved [00:34:00] was I just wanted. Like our sports teams to have more students to go to those games. And I know that cadets need to get outside of the academy, but they'll also like the fact that we send these people on a bus to whatever Lehigh or Lafayette or wherever it is.
[00:34:16] Ian Faison: It's like we could easily throw a bus of cadets to go cheer him on. And I think that. When you are all one team and night, that sort of stuff has like a huge impact. It had a huge impact at me at the academy to be able to go to all these different stadiums and watch the army basketball team play a bunch of different places.
[00:34:34] Ian Faison: And I'd signed up for pretty much. And we did a bunch of that stuff for the football team and Colonel McKernan and general Caslin and all those people were awesome when we were there to support those efforts, but it makes a huge difference. It makes you more worldly. C out to other places like I'd never been to central Pennsylvania, I'd never been to, you know, all those different places.
[00:34:53] Ian Faison: And it's really bringing the entire core of cadets to, to pass the Dina is something that there's a [00:35:00] reason why it hasn't been done since, but to my taste, not a good reason. It's like, it sounds like it was a logistic headache and maybe that's an understatement, but I think that stuff is so important because so many things.
[00:35:11] Ian Faison: Come from different places and walks of life and all that stuff, you need to be able to experience like that's, what's great about the army is it's a melting pot of all these different cultures and communities, and you have to get out there and see those places. And there's no substitute for getting on the ground.
[00:35:25] Ian Faison: You wouldn't go and not recon. And yet we do that. We don't get out there on the ground. So I just, I think that what you did is so cool and it's something that I would have a similar harebrained idea. I feel. We were like, remove all the barriers to entry that you can to get people to go to basketball games, get them a bus, get them pizza, get them, all that stuff so that, you know, if you get picked up when it's December or January, and it's five degrees outside, you can get picked up in a warm bus.
[00:35:51] Ian Faison: We'll take you up to the game and give you free dinner and you can go home. But yeah, I think that stuff is so important. It's so cool to see that you took the mantle for that when no one was. [00:36:00] Asking
[00:36:01] Rolfe Arnhym: you to do it? Well, it was amazing as everybody fought it until it was a reality, then everybody wanted in, can I go to that VIP event?
[00:36:09] Rolfe Arnhym: Can I get a ticket to this? Could I get something else? So all the naysayers suddenly switched gears a moment. The thing was that fully.
[00:36:15] Ian Faison: I want to switch gears to what you're doing now at Vistige you obviously work with tons of business leaders, senior executives, entrepreneurs. I'm curious, like what are some lessons that you've taken over the years in working with some of these folks and the types of companies that you're working with
[00:36:32] Rolfe Arnhym: and today's world right now, everybody is struggling with two main things.
[00:36:36] Rolfe Arnhym: As you probably know, one is manpower and the other is supply chain management, and many of them just are not equally. To move as quickly as you have to move in a very fast moving dynamic and inherent in that. And that's why there's a chapter in a book called decide to decide. They're afraid to make a decision because they're afraid that they put themselves either at financial risk or that their [00:37:00] decision will be criticized downstream.
[00:37:01] Rolfe Arnhym: I would say that. Number two is accountability. I find a general weakness right now in terms of people holding themselves accountable, they ready to blame almost anybody else's circumstance, pin the tail on some others donkey, nevermind, holding their people accountable. I find that internally and I worked very hard on this to make sure that they establish core values.
[00:37:22] Rolfe Arnhym: Some would call it a fundamentals. And, uh, in my book, the number one core value is mutual respect, which is a fast way of saying, you know, treat others as you would have them treat you, which makes a huge difference. I find at the same time that because of COVID and people remotely working, which is my facetious spin on it, that they have terrible accountability issues going on and how to keep people engaged, given an enormous growing of concern or.
[00:37:52] Rolfe Arnhym: Family issues that have somehow cropped up. And so for the first time in long time, instead of people taking work home [00:38:00] home is going into the workplace and suddenly people can't figure out how to cope rightfully or wrongfully. So you have a lot of things going on where motivation is really huge. And so one of the things I've been doing.
[00:38:13] Rolfe Arnhym: Almost on a quarterly basis is finding ways for leaders to re motivate their people, whether through, be through recognition or whether you do some sort of an, a veteran activity, or whether you wander around the office to do the four corners and let everybody know you appreciate what they're doing for them, whatever it is to pay more attention to people's needs and what motivates them and find out what motivates them.
[00:38:38] Rolfe Arnhym: And I think there's the key. If you can find out what motivates somebody and get. And given the opportunity.
[00:38:43] Ian Faison: Yeah. I remember sitting down with my wife probably, um, four or five months into the pandemic and I was like, every excuse has been stripped away for why we're not going to the gym. We don't community more.
[00:38:55] Ian Faison: We don't do it. We stop work at a certain time. We're at home. We have nowhere else to [00:39:00] go. We have no commitments. We have no anything. And yet we still can have time turns out. I think the problem is us not our competing priorities. And I think that was a hard look in the mirror for everyone. Yeah. Yeah, it turns out it's actually me.
[00:39:10] Ian Faison: That's the problem. It's not the commute. It's not the other stuff
[00:39:14] Rolfe Arnhym: you're spot on. And I'm not saying that everybody at that one size fits all. There are a lot of people can very effectively and salespeople are a good example. We can very effectively work in a home environment assuming that they have protected space and time.
[00:39:30] Rolfe Arnhym: Yeah.
[00:39:31] Ian Faison: How many folks do you think you've mentored over the past decade?
[00:39:35] Rolfe Arnhym: I'll put it into two categories I say in excess of a hundred easily, but it's gotta be more than that. I hadn't really thought about it. Currently. I got 58 underwing right now. And then I was told because I'm part of a program reaching out to, uh, help transitioning a senior officers and senior enlisted coming out of special ops command.
[00:39:53] Rolfe Arnhym: Somebody told me I'd met her over 40. There are a lot of people that I work with the pro bono that can't afford to pay for visit. [00:40:00] And I do it pro bono, just because somebody doesn't have the money. That doesn't mean they don't have the wherewithal and the opportunity. And I want to see them get the opportunity.
[00:40:08] Rolfe Arnhym: I really can't put a number on it. I wished I could, but it's a fairly.
[00:40:12] Ian Faison: And so what size companies does it just range the gamut?
[00:40:15] Rolfe Arnhym: Yeah, but the definition of small business comes into mind. So it could be that entrepreneur with five or six people, it could be a bank with a boatload of people or a law farm with, with 500, I would say in my particular world that runs the span just within my groups alone from 1 million to about 250.
[00:40:34] Rolfe Arnhym: That doesn't account. And
[00:40:36] Ian Faison: obviously we'll link up your website and all that stuff. If anyone wants to get in touch with you after this, I know you're not doing this for press here, but I gotta at least give you a plug. The other thing that before we get outta here, I do want to ask you, it's been really interesting to me and illuminating the stories about the chamber of commerce, because I didn't really know what the chamber of commerce did.
[00:40:55] Ian Faison: And when we were talking about it is really interesting to learn that stuff. What would be your [00:41:00] advice for a business? Owner or entrepreneur of how to leverage the chamber of commerce to help you out.
[00:41:07] Rolfe Arnhym: I think the chamber of commerce is a powerful tool and a lot of people just really don't understand it.
[00:41:12] Rolfe Arnhym: If you're going to effectively conduct an operate, a business, you jolly well better be a member of the chamber of commerce. It's tantamount to the good housekeeping seal of approval, but. Go into a city planning commission or into a county planning commission and have any kind of leverage the chamber of Congress will get you in the door.
[00:41:30] Rolfe Arnhym: So if you're waiting for a permit or you're waiting for a certificate of occupancy, or if you're trying to take out a license, or if you're trying to get a variation, anything that you do that is a bar to entry to you, to effectively conduct your business. That's what the chamber is all about. True. All you hear about is it's chamber of commerce day, which is another way of saying it's a good place to work.
[00:41:50] Rolfe Arnhym: Do business. Oh, that's a good tagline. But more importantly, the relationships that you build within the chamber of commerce lead to business opportunity. So [00:42:00] there's business opportunity, business information, business assistance, you can't for 400 bucks, whatever a minimum membership is in the average chamber of commerce, the return on investment really is a function of how engaged they are.
[00:42:13] Rolfe Arnhym: You can't just simply sign up and say, I'm now a member of the chamber of commerce. Put up your shield and move on. No, you've got to engage. And so they do this through the various committee structures and bringing people together to do various things in behalf of the community. There are two programs that just about every chamber does, and I did it and I'm active here in the Tampa bay area and the small business of the year program and in leadership, Tampa.
[00:42:37] Rolfe Arnhym: And I've been through both, both our vehicles to hit leadership, Tampa, like leader. San Francisco or any other city is to give you a backseat view of how the city ticks and to give you an introduction to every facet, to include the nonprofits, the cultural, the sports tourism, and the whole deal, the knowledge you gain through these programs, you can't measure through the small business the year you get here.[00:43:00]
[00:43:00] Rolfe Arnhym: Visibility. Nevermind. They run you through the coals in that process, and you're a better business coming out at the other end. So it's a totally an invaluable tool. I remember in Pasadena, I had a guy from a major airline. I won't use it for purposes of this podcast, but what I asked him to be the chair of my membership committee, which was suffering, we couldn't get people to come in.
[00:43:21] Rolfe Arnhym: Well, all of a sudden he started bringing brand toy. And he couldn't beat people off. And it was, it got to be to the point that if his airline didn't go there, they were not going to go there. It was that funny, but it's that kind of stuff that, that builds the relationships. At the same time, when I was in Beverly Hills, we were just like every other community.
[00:43:41] Rolfe Arnhym: You had a couple of events. One of those was what I facetiously would call it, wake up Beverly Hills. And we used to go around the room. People would stand up, introduce themselves, mumble their name, nobody AppAnnie at. And it was just hilarious. So I came up with the idea of everybody come up with a tagline.
[00:43:58] Rolfe Arnhym: Now I had their attention. [00:44:00] So there was one lady gets up. She runs a mortuary. What's your tagline. It is better to know us than need neatest. The neatest not know us, holy cow, a funeral home, but you could use that same tagline in almost any situation. And it created energy within
the
[00:44:15] Ian Faison: room. I love it, Ralph, this has been absolutely fantastic.
[00:44:19] Ian Faison: Any final thoughts?
[00:44:20] Rolfe Arnhym: Don't let outside forces influence your inner drive. I'm not Yogi Berra. When you get to a fork in the road, take it. I'll blast my way through. I will figure it out. But in the process, I've got to understand that human capitalism. And that's important. And so you've got to get people around you that buy into what you're doing.
[00:44:39] Rolfe Arnhym: And you go back to your question. When we started off earlier about relationships and leveraging them by paid to use the word use people, which I do not, I would rather use the word that together we can make something happen.
[00:44:51] Ian Faison: I love it. Great advice. Thanks again so much for hanging out today and sharing all these lessons.
[00:44:56] Ian Faison: I know I really appreciated, and our listeners do too, and the [00:45:00] greater west point energy community. Thanks again. We'll talk soon.
[00:45:03] Rolfe Arnhym: All right. Thank you very much.
[00:45:06] Narrator: This has been a production of the WPA O G broadcast network. Please take a moment to rate and review the show and join us each week for a new episode.
[00:45:16] Narrator: Thank you for listening.