James Wu | Vice President at Sirius XM Radio Inc.

Greg Spillane: 0:03

Dude, I mean, I get I get it the same way. When you tell people you played not just football in college, but you played defensive end in college people got to be like, Dude, you're you're out of your mind. Right? You're crazy. Yeah, I think ultimately, that's, it's a lot of that light. But I think to you in folks that played college football when my size, I'm small, but to regular everyday folks, I'm a big guy, six to 215 pounds. I think that in their minds that fits, but they don't realize that when I was out on the football field amongst you, giants, I was a tiny guy. And like I said to five, pretending I was way heavier than that.

James Wu: 0:46

You know, just trying to do the best I could to be out there fighting amongst the trees.

Greg Spillane: 0:51

I can't believe you're only 205. Like I remember, you know, I always knew you were undersized for a dn but 205. I mean, you're like, the size of the safe. Yep, yep.

James Wu: 1:03

And I wanted to be a linebacker, my whole career up until my senior year in high school. That's what I was. And unfortunately, or fortunately, I guess from the team perspective, we had a couple of juniors when I was a senior that were just, I mean, they both ended up playing packed in, and one of them played at Notre Dame. And so the head coach was like, hey, look, you could share time, or you could play the entire game, but we need to hear and, and just the way I was brought up, I wasn't in this is our early 80s. The late I mean, the early the late 80s, early 90s. It's a different time, right? I mean, the athlete himself didn't have as much power as I feel like an opportunity, the options that they do today. So when the coach said, This is what you were going to do. That's what you did. And you know, we get the fact that it basically cratered MMA anything, you know, as far as the next level, because nobody wanted 100 In high school at SR I was like 190 pounds playing defensive end. I'm not particularly energy because I'd never played it before. But uh, you know, you just do what you're told. And that's that, you know, that it kind of set my, unfortunately, that set my trajectory and football for the rest of my career. Everyone saw me as a guy that had his hand in the dirt. And that's that's basically where I stayed, despite my efforts to kind of move outside of that. But yeah, I was, I was more positioned as a safety than a defensive end. But you know, you get in where you fit it.

Greg Spillane: 2:33

Yeah, I mean, my story is not much different. I, you know, I mean, I'm, I'm 215 pounds right now to write it. I'm tall. I'm six, four. But people you know, they'll be like, Oh, you played football. You play football? Would you play and I'll tell them I was, you know, an offensive tackle. And they look at me like, oh, like there's like, no way you are offensive. All right. I'm just like, guy,

James Wu: 2:53

right. Just our our whole our whole concept of what a offensive tackle is, and that's what you were, yeah. 300 pound beast. In college. Yeah, in fact that most of most of us don't do what you did, right? slim down looking trim. And spelled as you are now, most of us. Once we stopped playing, we go the opposite. Right? Right, because we're just used to eating as much as we can and never happened that impact us. Those are things that I had to kind of deal with too. Early on before I was like, you know, I can't be living like this, and started getting fit and taking more taking that aspects of life more seriously.

Greg Spillane: 3:28

Yeah, man. Yeah. We'll dive into that a little bit later. So let's take a step back. So you you came out of a big time football,

James Wu: 3:33

I did. My High School in La Quinta, California in the late 80s, early 90s. I would argue if we weren't the Top program in the state of California, we were definitely top three every year. And again, this was before national rankings for high score thing. You know, there was the USA Today super 25. And we were always on that list, but we didn't really put too much stock in that it was more about where you were in California. What would it cow? Hi, have you rains and we were always one of those top programs.

Greg Spillane: 4:05

Right. So you played right, your starter there you came

James Wu: 4:09

in. I was a baseball guy, right. And I don't think folks know this as well. But Bishop Amman is also a big baseball school. So I came in baseball was my sport growing up, it was always I excelled at it. It was always one of the better players on the team. I show up though, you know, baseball spring scores. So I show up and football is everything. So I'm like, I'm gonna play football. I'm going to see what this about not too dissimilar than Andrew Klein, who was on your show a couple of weeks ago. My mom wouldn't let me play either until I was a freshman in high school. So that was my first taste of it. And to never play football and then go play for a program like Bishop Omar. That was there was a it was quite quite a lot to learn. And so that was something for me to kind of get my sea legs under me so to speak. My first day on on campus for you know, you start for football. You starting to stop Before even school starts, yeah. On to talk about culture soccer. I grew up in the suburbs of Los Angeles, upper middle class neighborhood. But my high school was 20 miles away in what would be the hood, at least from my perspective, my first day on prac on the field, we have practice. Again, game fight breaks out just on the fence. I mean, talk about culture shock. I've never seen anything like that. I mean, 30 guys is scrapping. We stopped practice and we're watching my freshman coach. He also his his real job full time job is he's a correctional officer. So he's all second nature to him. But I'm like watching this like, holy crap. There's a game going on literally on the other side of this chain link fence. Lots of take it a lot to take in. But that was just kind of part of the whole experience that bishop Amman.

Greg Spillane: 5:53

Yeah, so we're in LA Did you grew up I

James Wu: 5:55

grew up in Diamond Bar. It's a small, you know, town about 20 miles to east of downtown Los Angeles. I grew up in the earliest, you know, late 70s, early 80s. And it was not a lot of Asians there. So the running joke in my family is when we first moved to Diamond Bar, there was two Asians. My dad was fully Chinese, and me and my brother who are half Chinese. I didn't I don't think I saw another Asian kid in my town for 1015 years. It was a long time. The irony of it now is Diamond Bar is 70% Asian. So I guess my family was on the

Greg Spillane: 6:30

trendsetters. All right. Did you grow up pretty pretty into the culture? Like did your dad bring that?

James Wu: 6:36

Oh, that's a great question. Actually quite the opposite, right? My dad moved. My dad was born in China, right as they went communist, so and he came from kind of a family of wealth in communism and wealth, you know, personal wealth don't really mix well. So at that point early in his life, they moved to the Philippines. In it, that was right when the United States kind of installed Marcoses as the dictator there, they did a very similar thing where they nationalized a lot of their wealth when you couldn't own anything unless you were a national nationalized Filipino. So from there, my, my, my grandparents were like, you know, we need to move somewhere that has property rights. Sure, I went to they went to Hong Kong, my dad didn't much like that. And from there, he hasn't got to be a university, he decided that he was in the early 60s, he was going to come to the United States and attend college. Don't know what he was thinking, but ended up enrolling at the University of Arkansas in the early 60s. Talking about culture shocks, right. He was, he was kind of in the midst of all of that, and then not too soon after that got drafted into Vietnam, where he served and when he came out, that's where he met my mom. And the whole thing kind of started from there. But he because of that he earned his citizenship by fighting in Vietnam. And when he came out back, he was American. My kids are going to be American, he was fully assimilated. So there wasn't much of the culture other than every, you know, a couple of times a month we drive into Chinatown to downtown Los Angeles for dinner. Right but outside of that, full blown bred Americans and we didn't know any different.

Greg Spillane: 8:22

What a cool story, man. I mean, you know, your dad's born in communist China, ends up in the Philippines, goes to Hong Kong, comes to the US for college and then gets drafted and all of a sudden, Army What branch

James Wu: 8:35

well as a as a foreigner, you could only be in either the Marines or the army. They wouldn't let you be in the Air Force, or the Navy. So he went, he was like, Screw it. I gotta go fight. I'm gonna be a killer. And he joined the Marines. Now my dad is us a Marine, but nothing 130 pounds. So but it I'll tell you this, I didn't know I clearly I didn't know my dad free. My dad post is it was a different person. He was he's a tough, just no nonsense kind of guy. And that's how we were raised. Sure.

Greg Spillane: 9:04

Yeah, I mean, that's that's just the marine. Yeah, that really mentality. mentality? Yeah, no, I Marines just celebrated their 246 Verse. Semper Fi, I have a good buddy of mine. He's a lieutenant colonel in the Marines and I was I to really honor they couldn't have the Marine Corps ball this year because of COVID restrictions. But they ended up doing a small like, you know, 50% gathering and I had a chance to sit through and kind of like witness all the the ceremony around it. It was it was really cool experience. So Right on, man. So you, you got your high school career going. You're once you decide you wanna play college. I mean, you're an undersized kid. You're playing D and right away. You know, I'm sure yeah, that is what

James Wu: 9:51

my goals were a little different than most people and we'll get into this because it's kind of some of the learning that I found out about myself but immediately like Even before I got into high school, I wanted to play college sports. I thought I would be playing baseball, if I'm being honest, not football. Yeah. But as soon as I stepped foot on the football field for the first time, it really got to, you know, you know how it is. One of the first shows you do is that, you know, the the line, you pick, you're on your lap, and you're back, they blow the whistle, you get up and you run into each other. I've never done that, right? I hit somebody for the first time, put them on his ass. And I was hooked. I was like, and I into, and I didn't get in trouble for it. Right. I was in I was like, this is for me, like, you know, approved combat the ability to kind of just people up in and get your butt kicked, and just come back and keep going at it. I loved everything about football. And from there, you know, I still had my baseball ambitions. But I was hooked. And at that point, I was like, Yeah, I want to I want to go play. And it's also at that point that San Diego State was Marshall Faulk was kind of a big name there. They were always on television. And Mike was like, I want to, that's where I'd like to go. And it's it's funny, because that's where I was initially, I was also a big Notre Dame fan going to a Catholic High School. Notre Dame was a big deal, too. But I was like, Yeah, I think I could play at San Diego State and didn't have any reason to think that I was just like, hey, that's what and that was just kind of an early idea in my head. But as, as the as my college or high school career progress. You know, I don't know that I had specific ambitions about certain schools, but I didn't know that I felt like I can play at the next level. And I felt like I could play at Division one. And so, you know, I just was kind of pressing towards that. And I was I had a good trajectory. And so you know, I was asked to move to defensive end in that Sandy, Bishop Amman, it was different right at defensive end wasn't like go after the quarterback. That what my job was at at Bishop Lamont was to keep the tackle off of the linebackers, so they could feel them straight up. And so, yep, not making a whole lot of plays that show up in statutes. But my coaches loved the fact because I was that guy that did exactly what I'm supposed to do. You keep that tackle off our linebackers. Let them make the plays. That's your job. Whoo. And that's what I did. That didn't lead to a sack and lead to a lot of tackles but it led to a lot of great defense and that's what we were

Greg Spillane: 12:24

one of the things that's changed so much about high school football from you know, we're the same age and grew up kind of in the same era is I mean, it was rare if you had a high school team that really passed the ball like I mean really threw the ball like everybody was running the wing t they ran the ball a million times a day so it was it was about stopping the run and stopping the runs all about keeping the lineman off your linebackers and allowing your linebackers to flow side to side so yeah, I mean you know the now you know he had high school every high school is got a quarterback drops back

James Wu: 12:56

in that right, because that's an undersized. Yeah, speed was my entire game, right? Not going heads up and bump bumping up into a guy that bigger, stronger and reach me by six or seven inches. I would have had I would have done a lot better in today's game than I did in as a defense pennant as a linebacker, I think I would have been fine on the way.

Greg Spillane: 13:16

So yeah, you know, you good grades. Good students. smart dude. You've had some opportunities out of college to go to Penn. Yeah. So I mean, that's one of the ones very similar

James Wu: 13:27

to I was listening to your interview with Pat Swanson. And very similar. I didn't get any of those offers coming out of high school, even though all of my colleagues like USC, Notre Dame, UCLA, they're all getting recruited to major schools, but nobody saw me they saw me this little kid. I wasn't exceptionally big, wasn't exceptionally strong. I wasn't making plays because I was doing what I was told. But I felt like I continued to play so I went to a JC as a full qualifier, meaning that I didn't have to finish two years I didn't have to get a certain GPA. I had good si t scores had great grades. But I just wanted to continue my, my my career, and so I went to a local JC and fortunately, two things happen there that that really benefited me. A I was able to play under a defensive end that really taught me that took me under his wing and taught me how to play the position. Right. Like me, he was also undersized, but just way better. Jimmy Irby he ended up going to Texas a&m was was awesome. Today he's still he's a coach and a lot of his kids are now making it to the to one level and another thing was the defensive line coach at the time was very creative. In what he what I mean by that is he didn't just take you know, his two best tackles in his are his two best ends and his two best tackles and run them out there. He took his four best pass rushers and tried to put them on the field every time. So there was times I even at 205 and shoot at Mount SAC was probably 200 not even two or five I was playing tackle defensive tackle. But because we were running games, we were we were just annihilating people. And so that really taught me how to play the position but also with a coach that gave me a chance to get on the fields, and really show what I could do. And so you know that that creativity helped. And then I started making play started getting noticed, college coaches started inquiring about me, and it really changed the direction. What ended up happening though, was University Penn Ivy League came calling and what many people may not know is Ivy League schools don't generally, at least at the time, didn't offer lead IQ scholarships. So because of my upper class upbringing, my parents are, you know, I wasn't in need. So in order for me to work into the program, they're going to have to pay a lot of my way. And I wasn't gonna go for free because I had scholarship offers from Southern Utah, university Pacific's and Jose State. But Penn right I like university Penn Wharton school that was in my mind, right? Not even because it was also that I didn't have any ambitions beyond division one football. That's how I felt that's where my talent ended. Which is a good way in some some cases of self awareness, knowing what your capabilities are, but it's also limiting if you don't think you could do more than you want do. And that's something I learned later on in life. But so I'm set on 10. I'm, it's actually the worst recruitment you could ever have. Because I'm like, I'm going to pin back. So I'm telling all these other colleges. Yeah, I've made up my mind early in the process, right. So they're, they're doing what they do, they're moving off of me finding other folks to go. So everyone knows, like, National Signing Day is the first Wednesday of February, on Monday, that Monday before which is the fifth of February, and you know, all these, the details are ring true when things really affect you. On a certain personal level, I get a call from the guy that was recruiting me from Penn. And I think he's just setting we're setting up the logistics for Wednesday, the signing in calls me to tell me, you know, bad news, we're not gonna be able to offer you a, you know, a place on the team, we found two freshmen guys out of the bay area that were full ride financial aid, meaning that we weren't gonna have to come out of our budgets or, and I was devastated. Not just because I lost all the school I really wanted to go to but now it's two days before National Signing Day, and I have nothing. So I'm getting on the phone trying to call up all the schools and they're all telling me all the bad news like Sorry, we've moved on, you know, we've filled up our allotment for defensive salt scholarships. And now, you know, February 7, which is Wednesday comes and goes, I have no signing. The rest of the year comes and goes, and I'm just, you know, I've gotten over it. I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing. I'm working out every day just trying to bide my time. And what happens is, the the running back coach at my JC sees me, he's like, Hey, what are you doing? And I tell them my story. He had heard of it. Why would he right? He's, he's on offense. And I tell him, he's like, man, that's terrible. He's like, is there anything I can do? I'm like, Well, you know, if you can get me into a school, that would be great. Because I don't really have any anywhere to go at this point. I'm trying to figure out and at this point, I think my career so what am I going to do? So he's like, you might if I make a call, and he does, he makes a call. And it turns out he calls Clark Gilbert, who's the defensive coordinator of San Diego State. Turns out this Ryan best coach, his name is Binky bet. Played for Clark Gilbert, when Claude was the head coach of San Diego State in 70s. And turns out Binky bed was one o'clock, your favorite players? He said, putting five running back just wrecking ball of a player. Just if you know anything about Claude Gilbert, you know the type of players that he loves. Oh, do tight, guys. Right. And those are, that's the thing he was. So when he makes this call. I don't even know who he is what he's calling, he comes back. 10 minutes later, he's like, Hey, can you be at San Diego State tomorrow? Yeah, of course. Alright, well, you're gonna drive down here. He gives me this piece of paper directions, says I'm going to meet with Clark Gilbert. I don't even know who he is. Um, so I show up the next day. Coach Gilbert had already talked to Coach Ben had already gotten my transcripts. All before he talked to me. He already knew the kind of person that I was. And so he's talking me in. He basically says, Hey, James, you know, I have everything I need. Do you want to come play here? And I was like, Yes. He gets up from his office. He walks me across campus to the administration office, and he enrolls me that day. This is July, right? Like mid July, he enrolls me into all the classes, he has my transcript. So I'm not just getting into for, I'm getting the full classes I need. He gets me enrolled. Two weeks later, I'm showing up to football care. I don't know anybody I hadn't been recruited, I kind of forced on to coach Delgado, who's the defensive line coaches, then he doesn't even know. And I show up that day, and the rest is history. Right. I you know, I had to earn my way back on. But another thing coach Gilbert did that most people who play with me probably don't know is that he set me up with academic scholarships. I was not on even, you know, I walked on initially, but with by the second semester, I was full ride, academic scholarship for the rest of the way. And so I didn't, I wasn't off the football team, I kind of had I made my way. But that was all set up by coach Gilbert. And for that, I will forever be loyal to that man, he will always have a special place in my heart, because he changed the image in the event changed the direction of my life. And honestly, I don't even know that either who really know that. But that's the impact that they've had on me. And that's the loyalty that I have to the staff for San Diego State. Because, from my perspective, they were there for me when when I felt like nobody else was.

Greg Spillane: 21:31

Yeah, man, I was played on the offensive side. But how do you not love coach? That good.

James Wu: 21:36

And I worked my way into becoming one of his favorite players. And it's funny because you talk to any of my defensive teammates at the time, one of the things that they always greet me with is putting Whoa, and it was the thing that coach Gilbert got to do, right? When whenever when somebody would mess up on defense, he would, it didn't even matter I played defense event, it could be a safety factor. If they messed up, he put low in there. At least he knows the damn drills, he knows the assignment, he won't fuck this up. And it was in I look back at now, and a lot of fun this at the time, it was a I felt like it was a bit of a dip. So like, wait a second, is it Yeah, but as I grew, I realized it wasn't that it was more like people need to depend on reliability. And if you can't be reliable, then there's not a lot of use for you. Whether you're talking about business or sports or any team setting, you have to be somebody that can be counted upon. I didn't get that at the time I get it now.

Greg Spillane: 22:40

Well, look I for people out there that that don't know the idea that our 205 pound defensive end was gonna come out there on that team at that time with those people that were in front of you like it's actually insane like I don't even know if you realize how impressive that was right like you weren't you know, I mean look we're saying the state's a mid major program but you weren't backing up mid major guys like I mean, you know Kabir via email or went out and had you know, at Saks in the NFL, that guy, you know, made Pro Bowl teams, right. And, you know, I mean, you look on the other side of the ball, you have Scottie Nick, you got you know, Antoine young I mean, these dudes were beat

James Wu: 23:23

people today, but I'll say this more impressive than the people I play with alongside he was the people that I got to go up against every day and listening to a lot of your podcasts. Were talking to those guys. Mike Milan. Oh, yeah, fine. You know, people like Carl Charlie I don't think folks will ever really truly appreciate the type of animal beast that culturally was on a field just know off button with that guy and having to getting to go against him and practice every day. It was it made facing anybody else in the nation easy. Like there was no intimidation because I would I would battle calm utterly and every one of you guys and I think one other thing that people won't ever really truly know Greg is because San Diego State was a bit shunned in the mid 90s When we should have been making all those bowl games is one of the best California college football teams and we were always getting bypassed by another team. How great that offensive line was, I mean in and I'm not just talking about the starters, the depth you as you guys were backup to that line. And you guys were in so it wasn't just like going against you guys and practicing that you guys kept rotating in or even just constantly good folks and getting those types of reps and then being able to take that out against San Jose State or Fresno State. It just there wasn't it wasn't the same wasn't the same level comp Yeah.

Greg Spillane: 24:54

I feel the same way. I mean, I you know have a you know, when I when I became a starter there and You know, I would go up against you know, starting left tackle going up against the starting defensive right end, which was Kabir. You know, I went against computer every single day in practice, and I dude used to kick my ass. Like, I mean, he was he was a he was a load man I do as fast as I could run through you to do all those things I get in games, and I mean, I didn't play anybody. It's just, it's,

James Wu: 25:21

you'd have no fear, though. You know what to expect? And when they don't ever step up to that level, then you you know, you have a bit of an edge on them at the very least psychologically, if not physically.

Greg Spillane: 25:33

Yeah, so we'll get now you finished out. You know, I, I joke. I mean, you were, you know, an academic guy, all academic wack all those types of things. So, you know, you're a little bit smarter than the the average dude, but you know, people will people need to realize, and, you know, I don't know what your thoughts on this is. you major in football. Yeah, it just, it just it is what it is like you that is what you do. Like, yeah, student athlete, now you're an athlete student, like you, a lot of those are there to stay eligible and get the minimum and you kind of get to the point where it's over. And now you're like, now, like, I'm supposed to like, now I got to start my career.

James Wu: 26:13

Because I didn't have that that extended runway that a lot of our teammates did of wanting to play at the next level. By the time I was a senior at 205, my body was breaking down. Like I just I knew I couldn't keep doing it. And I'd one of the things I'd always prided myself on prior to that was I was always available. But I never got. And then all of a sudden, just, you know, playing at that level for so long, being undersized. It just it started to break me down. So by the time I was a senior, I kinda know, right? I knew that this was it. And I didn't really have any more ambitious to continue. The hard part was the transition like what's next. And so the point that you're making, when you when you're playing a program like San Diego State, it is your life, right? And there's no you're not working, you're not you don't have some side part time job that you're going to. So one of the problems that I found kind of graduating was I had no kind of work experience. Right. I was a I managed I was a major in business management that had never managed anything. So you know, I'm going on all these interviews now. And it's like, what do you do in and I remember because I was funny, one of my first interviews was Callie Collier International, which you know, who Sam was working for now. And I couldn't have done a worse job I didn't, I just kind of applied for the position. I had done no research, I didn't even know what the job entailed. And I'm asking stupid questions like, so what is the job? You know what, and wondering why I never got called back. But you go through those lessons you learn to improve. And I did. And then coming out of college at the time, this is the late 90s. Right? I got into what a lot of folks out into I imagine I think you you said to I got into financial services. And I actually found myself doing very well there. I didn't, I didn't have any prior background there. But I was always good with numbers. And I was phenomenally good with numbers. And just one of the things I seem to excel at was the interpersonal aspects of managing people and meeting people and also getting them to say, here's my life savings, please invest that for me. I got really good at that. And so, you know, the first couple of years out of college, that's what I was doing. I got set up with a small company called Sun America, which was a subsidiary of AIG at the time. And, you know, I did pretty well, one of the one of the biggest issues I had with them was that they love to say that they were independent, but they only wanted you to sell their son America funds, which nobody had heard of. So I used to get in trouble because I would be selling people fidelity Janus funds, because that's what that's what folks heard of, I mean, what did I care? But, you know, you start getting into the politics of, of business. And I learned my lessons fairly early on that folks really like things to happen a specific way.

Greg Spillane: 29:14

Well, I mean, look at that is a really, really difficult business to break into. I mean, the attrition rate for financial advisors I advisors is like through the roof, I mean, it's probably 95% And you know, you don't really get paid a salary, you're 22 years old. And it's like, their model is basically like Alright, hey, call up everybody's right. No, tell them you're in the business. Here's a little you know, here's a older person is going to kind of go along with you on those calls. And you know, you're like, hey, give me all your money and your assets and they're like we like No, like you don't even have any like you've never had it so for you to be able to actually find some success in there like there is a level of grit and I mean, yeah, talents there. Yeah, be talented. Every smart girl talk to you But like, You got to have a little bit of grit to be able to, like, have those conversations and push through that, like, where did that come from? I mean, is that something you've always had? Like throughout your life? Right? Or is that something that kind of developed over time? Is that come from your dad?

James Wu: 30:15

Yeah, that's great question. I think it's, it's always been in me, but a part of it was developed, you know, early on for my brother, my brother is six years older than me. So anybody who's had an older sibling knows, like the pain of that six years in early agent, time. And my brother was merciless. A lot of where I feel like my toughest toughness comes from is from him, right? He taught me that, you know, you couldn't be a little, you know, you couldn't be a punk out anywhere. If you weren't, people were going to take advantage of that. And so that part of that greatness came there. A lot of it came from the fact though, that I always felt that my last name. And when I was younger, I looked a lot more Asian than I do today. I had the bowl haircut and everything. I always thought that that that worked against me people always say under expected things from me, like they just never expected that I could be a good athlete or anything. I mean, being smart classroom, I think folks always expect that's one of the, you know, the stereotypes of being Asian. But being a good athlete, not one of them. And I always felt like I had to do be that much better than everybody just to just to prove that I belonged on that field. So in that was the same mentality I took to San Diego State, right. It wasn't like I was recruited to be there. I was there kind of, you know, with a bit of dumb luck in some grace. But I still felt that I had to prove to everybody, not just the coaches, but my teammates, that I deserve to be there. And it's that mentality that's, that's kind of I still have to this day, you had said that, you know, you kind of took it as like a chip on your shoulder. For me. It was more like a constant back when that was pushing me forward. Even though there was all this adversity in the face.

Greg Spillane: 32:05

Yeah, now, I love that man. So I, you told me a story the other day, I think it's got to go down in the hall of fame of the worst possible timing ever. And it's it's kind of funny. It's not funny, because it's a serious issue. But you went on your own and you started a financial advisory firm. And your first day of operations is September. That's right. 2000

James Wu: 32:31

It's the Monday after Labor Day. Of course, I wasn't going to start I was gonna enjoy that whole week off. I I've been planning this exit for months. I've been sandbagging business I was because what I what I had done is I negotiated a 90% payout. And that's unheard of for somebody. My level of production, I was good production, but not a 90% power that somebody reserved for half a million a million plus GDC goes to the concession I was doing about 150. But I managed to negotiate a 90% payout. And at the time, I was getting like a 45% payout. So why the hell would I submit business and make half the money? So I've been sandbagging all of this business. I was gonna wait. It was gonna be the first bit of business I was going to do through this new firm. And I just kind of coasted through the summertime. Right? Because I wasn't going to I was planning to leave the old firm start, and have been setting up all this the plans. Monday after labor day of September 1, excuse me, September 2000 22,001. It's September 10. Decent first day, nothing, nothing exciting is more like just let's turn the lights on and do all this. And then I wake up Tuesday, September 11, in the world is changed. And I mean, I mean, couldn't have been any worse timing for me. But that was just the beginning of the of the chaos that ensued. What what ended up happening after that was just a series of bad decisions, one after the another that just kind of continued to multiply on me, and almost entirely because of my own arrogance and ignorance. Right? I went into this thing thinking, I knew it all. I didn't take any time to seek out any mentors. And I just made every bonehead mistake a new business owner could possibly make and that was devastating to me.

Greg Spillane: 34:30

What What Why didn't you seek out any mentors? Is Was it something where you didn't think it was important? Or did you just feel like at this point in your life, you knew everything you know, and all somebody else?

James Wu: 34:43

All bad, right? And I look back at that time now and what I know and what I what I've learned subsequently, it's like, how could you and I'll give you a perfect example. One of the things I had to have for my new operation was its fancy office. All right. If you had talked, if I had just talked to anybody who had ever run their own business ever, they would have asked us a couple of basic questions. Hey, you know, that's a beautiful office, how many clients do you have coming into your office on a regular basis, the answer to that would be zero, I would meet all my clients out there. So, but I had to have this fancy office right to fit my ego. Because I started this new company had to have a fancy office house painted a crapload of overhead for and that was mistake number one. And it's just constant, small mistakes that just took all of my seed money in all the capital that I've been saving to start this business, just whittling it down. It's one of the things that really was the most upsetting for me, as I'm a lifetime saver. And I saved all this money of starting this new company. And I blew through that money in months, and went from a profit position. So now I'm putting things on credit, and digging this huge hole for myself, just continuing to dig happily, like, I'm gonna dig my way out of this problem with no experience and no guidance. And all I did was deeper holes.

Greg Spillane: 36:08

You know, it's, I it's something I think about a lot in my own life where, you know, when you first start off in business, especially like, as an entrepreneur, you know, you don't really have to experience and if you don't have those mentors around you, you're doing things that you think you're supposed to do. It's almost like you're, you're acting like an entrepreneur, right? Like, like, oh, like, Isn't this what an entrepreneur is supposed to do? Like, I remember so much. Like, when I started my first company, I, you know, I, like wanted to have a corporation, and it was like, I wanted to do this thing. And I'm, like, you know, meeting with, like, the lawyer and the lawyer just looking at me, like, what, why? Why are you doing this? Like it? You know, it's like, you're gonna run a C corporation, you got to have board minutes, and like, are you looking at? Like, why? And then you kind of get to it as an adult, and you realize it from experience. And it's like, you don't need to do things because you think you need to do them. Like there's, there's things that you should be doing, because they're the right things for your business at that time. And it's like, getting an office is a great example. Like, did you really need that big, flashy office? No, but isn't that what successful? People they have big, big offices. Yeah, like, Don't Don't I need to have a big reception area with, you know, like a, like a sitting room for people to come into, like, well, nobody visits your office? Probably not. But, you know, you know, you don't know those things earlier in your career. But so how do you end up in this? This automotive world, man?

James Wu: 37:34

Right, I was one of the things that I after, I mean, almost 12 months of just misery, just bad mistakes, bad mistakes. And then I finally made a good one. And it was getting into real estate early. Right. And I mean, that's kind of a common theme for a lot of your folks, you've been talking to entrepreneurs, you've been talking to how real estate. And so that's, that's kind of what got me out of out of my hole. So I started to climb out. And we were I was partnering with somebody that was really in real estate. And that kind of started to grow my company, the trajectory was right where I wanted it to be. And now I'm making money, and I'm doing things. But I think the problem that I was having, and it's a lot I think a lot of young folks have is success. I thought success was about how much money I can make. Right? And, but what I started realizing early on was, once I got past the problem, started having success in business, because I was doing the right things right focused on my craft, not focused on generating income, I realized I wasn't necessarily happy, doing what I was doing. I was making a lot of money for a lot of people, I was making good money for myself. But then I started having problems with my business partner, I started having problems with my clients. And that problem was in the way that it was more like the entitlement, you have to understand I was rescuing a lot of these folks from the.com bubble bursting, where they they started with half a million dollars. And when I by the time they came to me they made 150. And then I grown that count back up to 600 $700,000. And now they're bitching at me because they're taking quarterly paper losses for 15 grand. And it's like, what are you talking about? Right, I just charge you$130,000 to $700,000 You're gonna come pitch at me because you're down $15,000 with a paper loss. And so all of that stuff started to kind of build up on me and I have never had a vacation, Greg, you know what I mean? I was spending 8090 hours a week on this thing. Not having any much of anything of a personal life. And it just felt at that point like, man, people don't appreciate what I'm doing here. And so I was looking for a change in my father at the time was kind of ending his career and was working at American Honda. And he had just said, Hey, look, you know, I know you're struggling right now kind of with everything going on. Maybe you look at this. Now, you know, because I had that entrepreneurial mindset. Didn't really want to go work for a corporate see but I relented, and I ended up running American Honda's licensing company. And and they had and the thing about it was when I got there they were they were doing like 500 $700,000 a year just by accident. And that was almost all on key chains and license plate frames. And this could be so much more. So one of the first things I did was I started working with all the video game manufacturers, Microsoft, Sony PlayStation, because they had all these game racing simulation games, like grants reasonable Enforcer. And the first thing I learned from them was there's a formula, like they didn't pay more to get a Ferrari into a game than they pay to get a Buick, for example, in their view, it's in a racing game. But what they did was they had a formula. And basically, they said, the number of vehicles that you put into a game divided by the total number of vehicles, and multiply that by a common ratio that applied to everybody. So what I did was I convinced these video game companies, the problem I had was Honda doesn't have a bunch of sexy cars, I had one it was an NSX, and accurate NSX. So what I did was I got that one accurate SX into the game 10 or 15 times by changing the library. And what that did was took our video game revenue from something like $100,000 a year to like $10 million a year across all of those categories. And so I was like, Man, this is great. It was one of the best jobs I ever had. Because it was so fun. The reason when I realized it wasn't for me. And I also realized that working for these mega corporations wasn't for me either, was when I negotiated a huge gargantuan deal with the Rao, which at the time was the largest manufacturer of car seats. And I don't know what you what it was like for you, Greg, when you were raising your kids, your daughter's early, but going into Babies R Us and trying to pick a car seat, you have all these car seats. You don't know which one at the time. And this is in the mid 2000s. The number one the best selling car seat was Eddie Bauer. And the only reason that was the best selling is because people recognize it as a brand. So I got to thinking Well shit, Honda has a reputation for safety. And if you put a car seat and branded it with Honda, I bet that a bunch of people would want to buy that car seat. So I've negotiated $100 million minimum guarantee per year with the route 100 million that was just the minimum guarantee. Got that all situated, got it work through all the corporate entities. And then Honda Japan came in at the 11th hour and killed the deal. And I'd spent the better part of six months on that deal, getting all the everything lined up, it was going to lie, it was likely going to generate over a billion dollars in revenue for American Honda. And they killed it because they didn't want their brand associated with a potential fatality for which I get. But, you know, I thought it was short sighted. And it was one of the biggest reasons why I had to leave, right because I just putting that much work in and adjust for somebody at the 11th hour to say, You know what, we don't think this is good for this reason, and not even really engaging with you. I couldn't do that. And lo and behold, a job wreck ended up on my seat for XM radio. And so I kind of migrated into that and got into that aspect of automotive where I was supporting automotive, but from the entertainment perspective, and, and I you know, I did that for a long time, you know, moved to Stitcher Radio In 2010, before podcasting was a thing and ramp ed for them and got them into 5 million cars. And then got recruited back to Sirius XM about nine years ago. And this is where I've been lately running a vice president of automotive. And, you know, I don't know that this is what I planned for myself, but mostly now I negotiate all of these major contracts with these automotive companies. And I got pretty good at it. Who knows?

Greg Spillane: 43:58

So, you know, you think you think about the time with Honda, right? And and you're almost like an intrapreneurship role, right? It's, it's, you know, you're you got this little division within, you know, this huge corporation, and they're not doing a lot and all of a sudden, they give you the keys, and you're able to kind of run with it and do some really interesting creative stuff. I mean, just the gaming, you know, just thinking through the gaming story that you told, was really cool. And then you get this this kind of like, I don't even want to call it not really a joint venture, but you have this opportunity for this, this huge revenue stream to come in through Honda. It makes sense. I mean, I get your perspective on they don't want to be tied to you know, they get value, but like they they make cars and there's car accidents all the time. So maybe that argument kind of falls down a little bit. But from a culture perspective, like internally like Well, you got out a Honda and then you move to Sirius, which was, you know, still a little bit of a startup very

James Wu: 44:55

much, very much the Republic at the time, but the mentality was very much startup

Greg Spillane: 45:00

Yeah. Yeah. And then obviously stitch was cool startup mode, you know, that was a time. Like how how, how was the culture different? I'd love to hear. So

James Wu: 45:09

every anybody who's ever worked anything corporate, you know that there's bureaucracy involved right in a place like I would say father runs very similar to the military. And if you want to move up in that organization, somebody has to leave or die. Right? Otherwise folks sit in their chairs for 20 some odd years, that really wasn't something I was interested in. But it was something I enjoy doing the job itself of licensing was fun, I got to do a lot of cool things. But as far as from a career perspective, I knew I knew immediately, that wasn't the thing to do. So, you know, moving over to Sirius XM, they had this entrepreneurial aspect, although it was a public company, they were very new. And it was more raising no only reason they were public was they needed to raise the capital, a lot of satellites into space. Right? It wasn't, you know, to get, you know, equity.

Greg Spillane: 46:02

This is, this is post Howard, this is probably Howard Stern. So,

James Wu: 46:06

this is pre Howard. They're negotiating this deal with Howard while I'm kind of being on boarded, and they announced it afterwards. The big thing that happened, though, was XM and Sirius merged, was that it happened at the same time that the the great recession happened. And because there was so much that there was so much borrowing that Sirius XM needed to do to get all of their they were they were called right and all of a sudden, they couldn't meet their their debt obligations. So we got a white guy did from Liberty, and but all what happened during that time is nobody could do anything. So all of the creative ideas that I was working on before they just stopped because there was no money. Everything seized up and, and I didn't lose my job. But I'm sitting on my hands doing nothing, surfing the internet for eight hours a day at work, and I hated it. I felt like I was stealing money from the company. So I left and I went to Stitcher Radio, which nobody had heard of at the time. And one of my mentors that I sought out now right, who happened to be my former boss at XM had moved on to Pandora. He was running there, but BD. So then what I did was I just slipped into Pandora strip Slipstream, at the time, this is 2010, Pandora was one of the biggest names, you know, since replaced by Spotify in 2010. Pandora was the name of streaming. And so what I would do is he would go in and call on GM and say, Hey, we're gonna do this. And I will come in right in behind him and say, Hey, you have the solution for audio and Pandora. Stitcher is your solution for streaming talk. And I do all the talking points about what Sirius XM and how they did it. And I was able to kind of convey that to them. And really just touch on the hot buttons in that I knew motivated, folks, that's one thing I've gotten very good at Greg is understanding what motivates people why they're willing to make the decisions that they are. And once you understand what their motivations are, then you just attack those motivations, right? And you really just start gassing them up. Sure. And it really does touch on something that that Pat talked about, you're playing the long game, right? It's if you're trying to go in and sell somebody on the first visit, you're kidding yourself, write big sales, big things happen over periods of time, where you create these relationships. And the one other thing I found that is, these big deals don't happen between companies, they happen between individuals. And it's those relationships that build up over time, that that's really where the business is made. How do

Greg Spillane: 48:40

you you know, I mean, I agree with that, but because there's so much bureaucracy, especially, you know, now in your situation, you're you're talking to Honda and Toyota and Kia, these, you know, huge organizations, how do you navigate the internal bureaucracy of the target customer to get what the great questions like how do you map in this

James Wu: 48:59

question? Um, it's about that motivation works both ways. And it's not just about knowing the motivation of the of the other person across the table from you that you're trying to negotiate a deal with. It's also understanding what the motivations of a company. So what I always tried to do, Greg is I know very well what the what the three pronged strategy of Sirius XM is. So whenever I put a structure in front of my finance company for approval, I'm making sure that I'm hitting those three points, hey, this is how this deal is gonna add subscribers. This is how this deal is going to help improve streaming, this is how this deal is going to continue to ensure that we own and dominate the car, right? The three, the three tenants of our business. And I just go sell on those points, but there'll be a different set of points and I'm selling to the other people across the table because they have different motivations. So it's constantly juggling everybody's motivations, and then aligning If I'm a middleman, Greg, that's what I do. Right? And I'm putting I'm putting the parties together. But my job is intelligence, understanding what each side needs to make the deal work. Because when you're talking about the size of the deals that I'm negotiating, like, they're difficult. They're very difficult in Yeah, we're talking about $10 billion of revenue, when it's all said and done. Like, there's a lot of eyeballs on those things.

Greg Spillane: 50:29

So when you're, you know, thinking about, you know, people around you, you know, teammates, you know, expanding growing yourself, how do you how do you train people, like, what is your thoughts in that respect people better now, passing on some of the so I

James Wu: 50:42

know what my I know, I know, I'm very self aware, I know what my strengths and my weaknesses are. And I try to improve my strengths. I try to work on my weaknesses, but I'm always looking for people who do things better than me. Another thing that I learned from from football, in particularly at San Diego State, this is no through no fault of San Diego State, remember, I came, I was kind of forced on them. But my style of play didn't miss the the type of defense that we ran it, for example, as a 200 pound defensive end, it never made sense for me to go strike a blow to somebody like you, or call Charlie who are stronger, had longer reach to me, you know, just it wasn't a good idea. So one of the things that I've always tried to pride myself in is finding what people are good at. And then helping helping guide them into situations where they can help themselves in the company, based on what they're good at. And then give them the coaching on the things are not good. So they can improve. But really, the job is to put the pieces on the board in a way that is augmenting what you're trying to do, I don't need somebody to do what I do. But if you do these three things better than me, for example, you're better at interpreting analytics, that's a huge value to me. Right, but if you're not good at, and there's a lot of people who aren't good in front of the park, they're just too technical there to dry. There are two kind of mechanical, take them out of the partner, put them in a back seat, let them do that behind the scenes, and I found that they flourished. And then you know, there's those people that are just amazing funding partner, but they have no strategy. Right? So you put them partner facing when you pair them with somebody that does have those technical capabilities. So that's what I found myself doing now is more kind of putting the pieces on the board to get the things done.

Greg Spillane: 52:38

Yeah, I, you know, I spent a part of my I guess, earlier career in enterprise BD, and we were doing you know, like, large, same, same as you, you know, 10s, if not 100 million dollars, your SAP implementations, Oracle implementations, etc. And I would finance a lot of the BD activities, and we'd always, you know, we'd always call it's like quarterback quarterbacking, the relationship quarterback in the deal, right? It's like, you can't do all the work, like you need the really good technical experts, you need the finance experts, you need, you know, all those types of people that are around you, you know, that the subject matter experts for particular areas. And now you're just, you know, moving the chess pieces around the board, right, you're kind of setting the strategy and making sure the right people in the right place, they know what they need to accomplish, and being

James Wu: 53:19

very clear and direct with the directions, right. And I think that's one thing I found amongst poor leadership is that their directions are nebulous, but they almost expect you to reach inside of their mind, pull out what they're thinking, and then execute against that. And I hate, right. I hate when there's any ambiguity in what people are supposed to be doing. I'm very, like, this is what we need to get done. I'm less prescriptive on how, because I want I want to try experts in my my team to feel like they have the the flexibility and the independence to get it done their own way. But as long as they all understand what needs to get done, in a very clear on what needs to get done in the timeframes that they need to get done on, then you step back, and you let your experts do what they do. Right, you got to let your team work. You can't micromanage them, otherwise, you're not going to get the most out of them.

Greg Spillane: 54:11

Yeah, I I could not agree more. I mean, I think you just summed up my own, you know, leadership philosophy. I mean, you know, we always talk about it from an organizational perspective of of having a minimum of Northstar, right, like, You got to have this like direction, like, this is the destination, this is what success is gonna look like. And then, you know, you can break it up into some smaller objectives of what needs to accomplish in a shorter period of time. But then you kind of got to get it out of people's way, right? They need to know where they're going. And you want to make sure that everyone's aligned and going in the same direction. So I think a lot of companies mess up with that. They, you know, I I've, you know, I've been in a situation where I've, I've had to come in as a as a management consultant in a lot of ways. And you know, one of the first things I do is just interview people. And one of the questions I always ask is like, what are we doing here? Like, what is your company? Where you guys going? And you would be shocked that nobody in most cases for dysfunctional companies, you'll hear 10 different answers from 10 different 10 different people, they don't even know what you're trying to accomplish, or the founder of the company is trying to accomplish. Everybody's working towards different goals, different objectives, etc. And it's like, at that point, you can have the best people in the world. But if you're trying to do 10 different things, you no one's aligned, successful. So, you know, it's getting people aligned. And then, you know, I think he said it really well.

James Wu: 55:27

That's it. I said, at the Northstar direction, you set your expectations of what you expect and how things get done. But then you got to give folks the freedom to operate. And that's what you know, individuals did for me early in my career. And what I tried to do for them, I call it gravity, right? It's like you want to, you want to be this Jupiter in the solar system, where you're kind of sucking in the asteroids in the comments. So they're not hitting it bombarding you constantly freeing up the team to go get the things done. Because at the end of the day, it's the team that's doing the work the day to day, I'm just kind of captaining the ship, right and setting direction and trying to align my corporate objectives with my team's objectives. But ultimately, it's the team that's doing the work day to day. And you got to give them that right. Not if you give them independence in the sense of it, they also feel the pride when it goes well. And that's critically important to me that the pride of success, right. And that's another thing that I'm constantly talking about that comes from my athletic background is wins are important, you gotta show wins, right? And I think people constantly want to sit around and waiting for the whales to land on them. Now you got to be hunting all the time. Right. And one of the things I tell everybody on my team is if you if you need to go out and find business that pays your salary every year, right? Because if you are paying for your salary, you will always have a job. And that mentality is kind of pure entrepreneurialism, right. It's like, go out and figure out how you can grow this business. And I'm not talking about doing it in a manner that, you know, you have to go learn that big deal. Right, you get these small deals are the ones that leads the big deals down the road.

Greg Spillane: 57:20

Yeah, no, I agree. I, you know, at the end of the day, it's right. I mean, you're not going to you're not going to win every every game or you know, every every deal, but at the same time, like we're going to keep score. And it does.

James Wu: 57:33

It absolutely can. And I know you're the same because, you know, we came from the same place. It is about winning, right. And but I think as I get older, my definition of what winning and quote unquote, success is it's changed a little bit, it's matured, as I told you early on, it wasn't making as much money as possible. Now, it's more about striking that ideal work life balance, because my kids are at that age, you know, 12, nine years old, were they I want to spend more time with them. One of my one of the lessons I learned from my mentors, was that they they work so hard during those formative years that they missed a lot. And you talk about their biggest regrets. It's that they weren't there for their kids lives in AI. And I didn't. When I look back at my own childhood upbringing, my dad was over call it to, I didn't see my dad, I didn't show up many games. I didn't. That was me that was just like, but I wanted my kids to have a different experience and, and part of why I kind of fell into this role at Sirius XM, because when I exited Stitcher Radio, I kind of had a lot of options to continue down in the startup community, I kind of made a name for myself in that that Bay Area startup scene. And I had a couple of options there. But one of the things that struck me with was Sirius XM coming back, which is something I promised myself, I would never do go back to a company that left. But what struck me was two things that they were making a concerted effort to bring on entrepreneurial people like myself. And I was going to, I was going to have more control over my work life balance, not having to fly all over the country at all times, doing everything that I needed to do to be successful to help stitcher be successful in the early days. That was becoming unsustainable for me, just from where I wanted to be in my current space. Right. I didn't want my kids to be growing up, being like, Yeah, my dad was successful, but he really wasn't there. And that was that became really important to me as I started to mature and me and my wife kind of started talking more about what we wanted out of our lives. That became more of the focus. And which was which made Sirius XM. Yeah. And still to this day makes it a really good fit for me because, you know, I have, they've tied me to this company with with all of the long term incentive plans, right. It's hard. It'll be very difficult for me to ever leave. Yeah. But at the same time, they've also afforded me a lot of flexibility. I have a schedule where I can, I can leave early and assistant coach mops my son's baseball team. Right. And that's important. Because, you know, when he grows up, he's gonna remember those times and know that, you know, work wasn't the most important thing for me to him. It was him. And so if he if he, if he if I leave the earth, and that's what he has adopted the same way. I'm gonna I'm gonna feel like I was successful.

Greg Spillane: 1:00:29

Yeah, man, I couldn't, I couldn't agree more. You know, and I feel the same way. You know, like some Yeah, you know, you got to remind yourself, right? Like, it's, it's, like, I think to myself a lot of just about, right, enjoy the journey, right? It's not a destination. It's not a destination. It's not like I'm racing to something, it's like, because I think there's people out there that that have these, you know, aspirations and these things they want to do, and then they get there. And then they realize like,

James Wu: 1:00:56

right, like, it wasn't lost in the destination. And I didn't know that like, that wasn't something I learned early on or even was taught. My destination was money. Let's make as much of it let's get rich. In the funny thing was, the more I the more I was focused on that the least, like the less I attained it, it wasn't until I kind of set that aside and really perfected my craft. Got good at what I could get good at Learn lead. One of the things I love about your podcast, Greg isn't just the content, which I love immensely, it's that you probably added 10 books to my damn reading list. Right? And and so yeah, my avid voracious reader, I can't I can't know enough. Yeah. And and I want to know what some people who have done it. And that's what's important to me, because I think in today's day and age of social media and influencers, it's there's, there's so much kind of fake success, right? I'm really appreciate what I feel is real success, meaning, not that it manifests itself in a lot of money, or big properties, or big houses and sports cars, but that you've, you've learned some things and then can articulate them to the next set of folks and say, Hey, this is real, meaningful things. And if you do these, if you follow these practices, you will find your own success. And that's what I most appreciate. Great about what you're doing here. I couldn't be a bigger fair. I've listened to all the podcasts in I mean, I've gotten into cycling lately, because as as we kind of hit shut down the whole gym life, I had to find something else. And I'm telling you, man, like I don't think I found anything that gets me from point A to B better than listening to your podcast. I really.

Greg Spillane: 1:02:45

Oh, man, that's that's super kind bro. I appreciate that man. And I honestly, this is why I'm doing it are there are conversations like this? I you know, I I? I didn't necessarily have an agenda for this. You know, it's just that's why I'm passionate about it. And you know, people would ask me why, you know, what are you gonna do? What are you trying to get out of it? And I just like, You know what, man, I just want to reconnect with really interesting people and have great conversations and you know, see what happens and that's that's the experience I've had and I mean, these these conversations to me are so much fun. I actually wish I could find a way to just do this right now. Wait, if I can help. My only thing is

James Wu: 1:03:22

we all sit here we own power. So already on our networks, but I'm keep doing it. Man. I've already passed you on to a few people just straight up. I'm so impressed with what I'm doing. There's not anything else that I've seen. And I'm a voracious podcast listener, just you know, just based on Stitcher. It really got me involved in it. And I've been looking for something like this. And so I just want I want you to know that right? Like you're hitting a mark. You're definitely hitting a mark