Episode 16 | When Workplace Fraud or Ethics Violations Knocks Your Socks Off with Terry Rich

Terry Rich  00:00

So we’re looking at the lottery. We had a, somebody bought a ticket when $16.5 million. And they didn’t show up. And so we did investigate. We said, Hey, now’s the time to show up. Well, then somebody showed up and just said, Well, they didn’t show up, they called and said, Hey, I’m gonna send you the ticket, you send us the money. Ding, ding, ding Nana, we’re not gonna do that.

Voiceover  00:23

Welcome to the Lead at the Top of Your Game podcast, where we equipped you to more effectively lead your seat at any employer, business or industry in which you choose to play. Each week. We help you sharpen your leadership acumen by cracking open the playbooks of dynamic leaders who are doing big things in their professional endeavors. And now your host leadership tactics and organizational development expert Karan Ferrell-Rhodes.

Karan Rhodes  00:50

Hey there superstars This is Karan and welcome to today’s episode. You know, one of the rarely discussed dark sides in the world of work occurs when ethics or fraud violations occur. And you know, when you’re the leader over a department where these violations occur, it’s sometimes it’s like a punch in the gut when you learn about him. This is the time that human resources and legal are frequently brought into investigate, you might find yourself right across from some of the company executives having some really hard conversations. And then frequently as a result, new policies course corrections, and sometimes even the foreign staff are quite common as well. And unfortunately, we’re just not taught how to handle such challenges. While we’re in school, or you know, there are very few special courses around that. And having to learn in the moment is so challenging. However, my guest today is not only an expert in addressing ethics and fraud violations in the workplace, but he also headed the team that cracked the largest lottery fraud in the United States history. Terry Rich is the founder of Rich Keynote LLC. And he’s an international speaker on the topics of ethics, fraud, and innovation in the workplace. He is such a fantastic storyteller, as you’re gonna see, but he has tons of nuggets that you will want and be sure to add to your leadership playbook. And be sure to listen to the end of the episode when I will have my closing segment called Karan’s take. And this is where I share a tip on how to use some of the insights from today’s episode to further your leadership acumen. And now enjoy the show.  Hello superstars. This is Karan and welcome to another fantastic episode on the elite at the top of your game cop podcast. I am super excited and thrilled to have on today’s show Terry Rich, who is an expert and speaker on a variety of topics as you which you will soon learn. But in particular, what we’re going to delve down on is the areas of innovation. And he has a fascinating story related to ethics and fraud in the workplace. And believe it or not, that is a lot more common than you may know of, unless you’re in kind of the HR space or was a leader who had to deal with that. So I’m really excited to talk to Terry and have him share some nuggets of information with you. So welcome to today’s podcast, Terry,

Terry Rich  03:21

thank you. I’m proud to be here.

Karan Rhodes  03:23

Oh is so thrilled to have you. Well, before we delve into your tremendous background and some fantastic stories that you’re going to share. For as much as you feel comfortable. I’d love for you to share with the audience a little bit about your personal and professional life, like where you grew up, and what have you and a bit about your professional journey. And then we’ll dive into some of those great topics I’ve mentioned. You know,

Terry Rich  03:48

many people when they go into a think they’re going to work for someone all of their life. You get out of school, you go to work, and you’ll be there. My dad said retire and you’ll find your happiness. And I realized happiness happens on the way to success. So I’m like all over the walls, but I always made the decision of when I transferred. So let’s get started. I started on a farm. And we had no money. Last name was rich. We were rich with a family. I mean, we always were happy everybody’s giggling. We always had a good time when we got together the grandparents. I went to school at the University in Iowa, and then came out and cable television. Friends were in broadcast but I spent 20 years in cable television and I had a couple life changing theories there. One was I did a promotion for my local hometown and landed on the Johnny Carson Show. He talked about doing satellite uplinks back before satellites, were cool. So when I was in the cable television, I started doing satellite HBO free previews, where you see HBO and then call an out order that type of thing. I was on camera. And lo and behold, about halfway through the company, I thought I’d be there when I was this age. Now that group came in and tried to buy them out, do a hostile takeover. And so we cashed out and all of a sudden at age 40 I had all the money knew that I ever hoped for in my life, plus all of his fame and fortune for being on TV and I thought, Geez, what do I do next? So I started my own company. And so I started three or four different companies. And we did these free previews for all the different HBOs stars. I was on camera for many of the national networks. And I did that for about 10 years and started a couple other shows and bought and sold a radio station, but at age 50 midlife crisis, so I thought I gotta get off the road because man, we were doing so much it was great money, all those sorts of things. But I wanted to do something as a give back. And I got a call from a former governor who said, hey, the city is about to close the state zoo, would you be interested in going in and trying to get it turned around? So who Gideon, I grew up on a farm but who gets to help with giraffes and tigers? I said, Okay, so we turned it around from a $600,000 deficit for years, put it in the black and raised $15 million dollars, so that zoos around forever just had a great time doing that. And then we had a call from a governor who said, hey, the lottery directors resigning, you’ll have marketing and promotion. I like speaking. So he said, Would you be interested in running the lottery. So over 10 years, I got to give away almost a row over a billion dollars in prizes. Plus, we had something that completely changed what I do in management, everything’s fun and marketing all that’s really, we busted the largest lottery fraud in US history. And so that’s been kind of a legacy here. And I learned so much about how important it is to have the accounting people in your organization and the legal people and checks and balances that protect your reputation. So now I’m retired and I’m on the road talking about that fraud and how to save your companies with the checks and balances, and also on how to come up with new ideas. You just need a jumpstart and trying to look and do something new. So it’s been an unbelievable life and ending with this professional speaking all across the world, which is so fun. Because you fly and you do something to spend a couple extra days and learn more about all of our great society.

Karan Rhodes  07:02

I think you and I are kindred spirits, I do the same thing. When I go and speak hours, they do extra days to get to know the areas and now the people I sometimes bring the family over because I travel the world similar to us. So what an amazing career you’ve had thus far. But it doesn’t sound like you’re stopping anytime soon. So that’s fantastic. And what I will also say I have a really good friend, we’ve talked a little bit before we get started about the lottery. But I have a really good friend who spent numerous years helping lead the lottery draw in here in the state of Georgia. And of course, a lot of it was top secret and things she couldn’t talk about. But she mentioned how important it was to follow rules and regulations and how they’re, you know, very regulated industry and things that they’re you know, they’re always watching out for plenty business, if you will. So I would love for you now, Terry, if you could share a little bit about the story around how you all discovered the fraud. And my listeners, I want you to kind of listen through the story because although he talks in particular about the lottery, as I mentioned, there’s a lot of fraud and I have stories I could you know, share as well. That fraud at different levels occurs at all organizations in some way, shape or form. So keeping all leaders need to sharpen your acumen and how they keep your eyes and ears peeled and listening to the ground to kind of track some of those traits or warning signs. So taking away Terry and tell us a little bit about that.

Terry Rich  08:38

Nugget number one. So working at the lottery, we had a somebody bought a ticket when $16.5 million. And they didn’t show up. And so we did investigate, we said hey, now’s the time to show up. Well, then somebody showed up and just said, but they didn’t show up, they called and said, Hey, I’m gonna send you the ticket, you send us the money. Ding, ding, ding Nana, we’re not gonna do that. Right. For a short after four years of investigation, we realized it was someone from a vendor that served our lottery, who had an IT person who wrote the program compiled the program, he had all the keys the kingdom to actually come up with the numbers in a computer trying to win this jackpot. And ultimately, it was such a good investigation that he his brother and his friend all pled guilty and were sentenced up to 25 years in prison for this largest lottery fraud in US history. But here are the lessons. I think that if you’re a small business or a small organization, think about small churches, who’s the church secretary who counts the money and takes it to the deal. Now you hear about them stealing all the time or the school districts, any organization if you don’t have the right checks and balances Now, here’s the nugget National Association of Certified Fraud examiner’s talk about a triangle there are three things that will set you up for internal fraud. People worry about hacking, but you got to worry about internal fraud too. Number one, finding Actually, now, Karan, you and I like to have money, we want more money. But financial need happens when you have a really good employee, and all of a sudden they get a divorce, they go into bankruptcy, they have a drinking problem gambling problem. And all of a sudden, I’ve got to get more money and they get desperate, but they can’t steal unless the other two things come together also, and those other two things are number one opportunity. So if you’re the accountant, and you write the checks, and you write the POS, that you’re ripe for opportunity, I mean, you have all the keys to the kingdom, right? So that means that you as the leader of the organization, or down below, you want to check. So you have to your two signatures, you have checks and balances. So opportunities the second, the third one is rationale. At what point does the devil on your shoulder said, There, he really could do this, because Joe or sue over here is making more money than you are you deserve it. If all of those three come together, you’re right for fraud. And that’s what happened. In this case, a gentleman who did this. Number one, his brother was thinking about getting divorce his friend who he helped get money, had a big Security Exchange Commission case against him out $2 million. This gentleman had a big house he was trying to pay off for. And so they had the financial need. The second is this person had the opportunity. He wrote the code compiled the code, he put the code into the computer, and he oversaw the drawings so that he could do this. And very rarely in the lottery industry, this just doesn’t happen anymore. All these checks and balances have been corrected. And then finally, rationale. When we did the when after he was sentence, we asked, Why did you do it? We wanted to know that is it happening anywhere else? He said, Well, you caught all the ones that we got. But he said they worked me too hard as a small organization. I was working nights, they were calling me when I was on vacation. And so the point is, appreciate your accountant, appreciate your legal folks, and appreciate the checks and balances just you have within an organization make sure you do that. And one final story and all of this that really brought it home to me there was a business manager in a county in our state, who the county supervisors decided, you know, we’re small, we don’t have enough money, let’s have this person actually oversee two counties rather than one sounds logical lower overhead. So they did and this one supervisor and one of the counties, at most meetings, never read his papers or anything, but he always vote and he was always crusty old, you know, old guy was just mad at the world. But he had to say once well, you ain’t stealing anything, are you to this business manager? You know what she stole hundreds of 1000s of dollars, but not from his county. And the rationale for her was maybe that devil on the shoulder. The angel kept saying, you know, that person asked, he’s probably going to check some time. So just once in a while having an overview, say we need to have an audit we need to look at these things are very important within an organization. So that’s the story of the largest lottery fraud and US history and how we busted him actually, with that lottery ticket to hot dogs and Bigfoot.

Karan Rhodes  12:58

Oh, tell us about the hot dogs.

Terry Rich  13:02

them for 18 Thank you, Karen hotdogs. You see, when Edie went on trial, he was found guilty the first time just for our state, but they wanted a character witness so that you didn’t get charged with too many years. So they brought up his brother who actually was part of the deal. They were dumb enough to bring up the person who was putting on stand with the you got to tell the truth, the whole truth. And he said, Wait a minute, the video I saw that only my brother my brother, eat don’t eat hotdogs. That guy was ordered hotdogs. Well, Eddie, the guy who did it was probably between three and 400 pounds and we go whoa, wait a minute. This guy doesn’t eat hot dogs and then AP reporter put that in his article, send it out on the national wires and an FBI agent said wait a minute. The brother who was up testifying, I busted them or tried to on money laundering and he said he won the Colorado lottery. So they called up to our prosecutors and long story short of Eddie hadn’t bought two hot dogs and the guy his brother had been on the stand sand two hot dogs. We didn’t ever caught it. Ironically, his brother also messed up and that he was a Bigfoot Hunter. And they use Bigfoot associates to go catch some of the lottery they did. The Bigfoot Hunter was not quite smart enough that when he won the lottery in Colorado, he got the money in cash because the brother didn’t want his wife to know that he wanted gaming 90% of the cash which was the deal in sequential order and decided I might get caught with this. I better try to money launder this. So we took it to a fireworks dealer to exchange some $100 bills. Fireworks dealer got nervous and call that FBI agent. All of that had to happen for us to bust this or he probably would still be doing it today.

Karan Rhodes  14:41

Wow. What a tale what a true tale and story around that.

Terry Rich  14:46

I want to say one other thing. The reason I tell the story and I’m out on the road telling the story. I don’t want anybody to have to go through this simple procedure is very simple that when you hire somebody I don’t like policies because I’m a rebel. I don’t, I don’t like to follow rules. But policies and procedures important if you have a policy, which basically says, when you’re hired, if you steal, you will be caught and you will be prosecuted. Just put that in or we use may just because you never know the circumstances. But just by saying that gets that devil on there, the angel on the shoulder saying, Hey, you better not do that. Remember, you signed that deal, or having two signatures helps that. So those are some easy lessons that will save you grief in the long run, because truly, it took six years and a lot of mental anguish to get through this entire process and investigation.

Karan Rhodes  15:33

Oh, I totally can understand that. I’d like to pull back the layer of onion just a little bit. After this experience. Can you share how the organization ended up pivoting to kind of help prevent this in the future? Because obviously, there weren’t enough guardrails to start with, for it to be as immediate apparent, was it just implementing policies or were there

Terry Rich  15:58

there was a simple as dividing up responsibilities. So one person compiles it so that, you know, usually it’s loose lips, sink ships, that’s why people who commit fraud typically don’t have four or five people in, you try to do it by yourself or by one. So a lot of policies have changed. I feel very comfortable, I don’t work for the lottery now. So I can play the lottery. Guess what, I spent a lot of money, who I not a lot of money. I usually play the Powerball and Mega Millions when they’re big. And I’ve won $4. And you read one of the later Powerball jackpot from the end, it sounded like there must be fraud. It wasn’t at all it was because they were taking the time with all their checks and balances that when something didn’t happen, and that was that they had one state, there are two computers in every lottery that have to match exactly how many people bought the tickets. And those are put in two separate places are handled by two different people. And those two have to send it up to a third party to make sure that the numbers exactly match, one didn’t match. And so all of the policies and procedures kicked into gear. And because it was such a large multibillion dollar jackpot, it took a lot longer for those computers to process and define those. And once they merged, merged everything they found exactly where the problem was fixed it in a way they went. So those are the kinds of things a lotteries have. And I’m thinking the lotteries are run by each state. I really liked the way that it’s set up. And it’s a heck of a lot better than playing your gaming with someone from Malta, doing poker or something like that, you know, you can talk to your governor, you can talk to your representative about the lottery.

Karan Rhodes  17:28

Absolutely. I want to share just a really quick story just to augment yours and the points that you’ve made. I have a client that I was brought in to do an investigation of and work with their legal departments, an enterprise level client, and there was an employee who had a corporate credit card. And they call themselves having checks and balances, but it was kind of loosey goosey where there weren’t flags on spending within a month, it was only after the invoices would come in. And so this one employee in less than a month ran up over $750,000 of charges. And to your point about the why we actually called in the FBI, because it was at a federal level theft. And I sat in on investigations and what have you, but the employee said was that they were going to through a difficult divorce. He wanted to impress his wife, who was they were separated at the time, he wanted to press the kids, and he bought any and everything he thought he could to win them back. And you know, you name it cars, vacation homes, desperate desperation. And so they did end up actually prosecuting him. And of course, they did have a sound policy in place. Of course, they fired him, but then also prosecuted as well. But that’s another you know, real world example.

Terry Rich  18:54

Here’s another nugget for you that goes to the piggies banks to that I think it’s 65% of most people who create fraud within an organization have never created it before. And those I think it’s only like 50% of people who create fraud have actually been prosecuted, you find somebody’s doing something, you just fire them, you know, we don’t want lawsuits, and let’s just get them out, tell them they’ve got to resign and get them out here. But what do they do they go to the next place, and then they create fraud there, right? So it is kind of important in my mind to do that prosecution. The number one place that people find fraud that prevents fraud is employees, vendors and anonymous tips that you should make sure everyone knows if something doesn’t feel right. You can go to the HR department or the legal department and put that and make that very obvious, because that’ll make you think in that rational Wait a minute, I better not do it because Joe over here might know that I’m doing something and that would prevent that. But that tip hotline actually saved us because we held the video of the purchase for almost three years and then when we released it immediately someone said I know who that is. So anonymous tips are also important within an organization that will save you a lot of money and time. I mean that for

Karan Rhodes  20:00

sure. Well, and that’s one thing that always recommend is to have an ethics or tip line for and make sure that it’s an integrated into the company, you know, onboarding and reminders every year when they have to do compliance training and things like that. So people know,

Terry Rich  20:15

you’re absolutely, well, I

Karan Rhodes  20:18

definitely don’t want you to get out the episode without us pivoting ourselves to some of the great work that you’ve done on innovation and your thinking around that. And

Terry Rich  20:30

I’ll give you a couple of basics. I love doing brainstorming, I love coming. If I can make it in 1510 minutes to the grocery store, I want to make it 958. The next time, I’m always looking for things that might anything with it around me that I could maybe try to figure out how to improve. And that’s how you come up with new ideas how you make the next million dollar idea. And I use the example of going out, I learned this in my 40s or 50s. I learned this and I went to Napa. And I thought that the people who made wine just took the grapes from behind and put them together and they had a word no, no, they go out and they go all over the valley because there are different temperatures and different soil conditions each year. And they get a bushel basket and they come up, just assume it’s 100 New grapes to figure out which is the best when you’re brainstorming, you want to divide it in a two step process. Step number one is to get 100 ideas, get your group together, put together 100 ideas, and then everybody gets together and prioritizes where those are. You want the 100 ideas from accountants, lawyers, you got to avoid the no man. So when you’re brainstorming, you got to say, no judge, somebody starts going. We tried that before all that No, no, no, no, every idea is a good idea. Because your accountants and lawyers will complain unless they get to contribute. And they know every idea is a good idea. You put that in the bushel basket, then you take step two, which is that was daring to dream, then you dare to act, you prioritize those with a group. And number one, two or three, we’ll have the whole group buy in and now you really have the momentum to come up with that new idea. Now that bushel basket has to be as diverse as possible, you don’t just get all the red grapes, or the green grapes or whatever. It’s so important that if everybody around you, you and you’re brainstorming, coming up with a new idea look like you. You’re I mean, today’s world is so diverse and you’re able to come out and you have a much larger audience to make that much more money. You want to be sure that you have as diverse a group, all of that when you’re putting together the ideas and evaluating those when you do it. But then you go to individual ideas. I often wake up in the middle of the night and have a pencil and paper beside my bed. To write down ideas. You want to write down all ideas because you forget them, especially age. And in that we came up when I started working for the state took me many years, I tried to learn something new every year. But this is what I learned as in my 50s state employees I walked in I got kind of excited to paint the wall yellow, let’s put animals why the animal could we put on the lottery ticket, you know this. And they melted down, I’d see him and they’d just be like that what’s going on? Well, we can’t do everything. And I realized that King says Oh, poop and everybody says, Oh, we got to go to the bathroom. That’s what the gang says, you know. So what you do is, we decided how can we communicate better on what an idea is versus have this as your job changing? I want you to do it. So we came up with the word co T cut. What we tell everybody, when you’re doing an email to someone, you want to give them an idea and get it off your chest. Because you’ve had this for a while, you write one of three things action required. And I did that for about 1% of everything I did action required means job changing, you should do it, I want you to do it. The next one is FYI, for your information, which means read it sometime we’re going to discuss this, it’s important, but it isn’t the priority today. And the final one, which really sets it off and I do about 60% of it is CO t consider or throw away. Now what that means and you got to make sure everybody knows the rules. If I send you something to co t if you’re busy. If you’re in middle of a big project, you can simply hit delete, you don’t have to read it at all. All I’m trying to do is just get ideas off my chest knowing that they probably would read it because the boss and CO t then you don’t consider and if you’ve got good ideas yourself, that’s good. Don’t reply to make great idea. Don’t be sucking up to me as the boss just say, Don’t even reply that you got it. I just know you haven’t. Well what they did, which was amazing to me, they started sending me all these great ideas, but they also took it to their employees. So imagine a receptionist who’s tried to come up with a really good idea because the chair up front stained, it’s breaking, somebody’s gonna get hurt. And so they finally meekly write it out because they don’t want to get fired if the boss didn’t like the idea and they put it in the suggestion box. And then two weeks later, no one’s read it or if they have it’s been sent around a little bit to get back to them. They’ll say management never listens to me on idea. So now that person can send it to me, the boss or anybody else and have no restrictions, no judgment. They’re able to send ideas out and not worry about they know i’ll probably read it but I don’t feel obliged because I don’t want to hurt their feelings because they’re an employee, a good valued employee. So they know that I’m not going to get back to him but they finally have an easy way to give ideas and to get ideas, get it off the chest. And as the person receiving them, I don’t have to feel guilty that I have to immediately reply or say yes or no at all. And all of a sudden, it became such a much more innovative environment as we went on that, and we came with all sorts of great million dollar ideas. And I’m going to give you a million dollar idea that I have today that I know will work, I just haven’t got to figured out how to do it, we can do them to stick them around. Alright, carry, right. So that’s caught, that’s what’s considered a throwaway. And already, I’m may hopefully you’ve had 10, or 12 Nuggets, that somebody’s got one out of that every time I get around and work with people, I’m all over the board, I don’t do drugs, I drink a Diet Coke, which probably gets me hyped up. And I love doing lots of ideas and hoping one of them stick.

Karan Rhodes  25:45

I love that as well. And I hadn’t heard that consider or throw away. So I love that we’re definitely going to add that to our leadership playbook. And being an organizational effectiveness expert, what I think was so brilliant about what you did with that is when you rolled it out, you help people understand what it truly meant. So that a non response did not equate to I don’t care. Yeah, it gave permission to, like you said, get ideas out there test. No one got to the right person shit that

Terry Rich  26:16

way, you know, right, trying to get action today. We’re trying to just fill the bushel basket.

Karan Rhodes  26:20

Yes, you know, we’ll take some of the best ones and kind of circle back if it makes sense

Terry Rich  26:25

the other and prioritize what works best for the accountant for the lawyer for everybody.

Karan Rhodes  26:28

Love that. Love that. Thank you so much.

Terry Rich  26:32

I’ll show you how that worked at the zoo, please. We did it with a main group. And we talked about we don’t have any money when we started. They’re losing a lot of money. We don’t have any money to build a $2 million exhibit. What could we do? And so we thought we have all the kids 10. And under what about young adults? What are they like? And of course the young adult over here, the millennial said booze. I said, Okay, well, let’s sell booze. So we did a Zoo Brew, which means that at night, we left that open, no kids got to come just young adults, we put in a band had the animals out, and they were averaging $250,000 in revenue off the booze those evening. So it started to turn it around. And then we looked around said, well, we can’t build the big exhibit. What do we have a lot of that’s free. Poop, animal poop. So we got an exhibit called scoop on poop, where kids could come in and giggle. That’s what Tiger poop looks like. Or that’s what this looks like, that looks like all of a sudden, whatever may come in, but then we realized that we had a lot of Tiger poop that we were just throwing away that in our state, we have a lot of white tailed deer, white tailed deer eat a lot of flowers. But for some reason deer have the natural instinct of what a predator versus prey is, and that a tiger is a predator. And when they smelled Tiger poop, they built ours. So we started selling Tiger poop for $20, a gallon stock sold about $20,000 That summer, and Tiger poop, you know, there are so many things that you can improve upon. And when you go into a job, don’t think I’m going to take over and be in charge. Think the people before me built these bricks and built this institution foundation where it is, I get to add my my ideas and my execution, to build it even to a better and when you get replaced and take off, then you can say to the next person, you get to do your brick and be very proud of what you’ve done.

Karan Rhodes  28:16

I love that. That’s so important. And the speaking of adding a break, as you know, I wrote a book on some of the top tactics of leadership execution. And I always love to ask my guests, which of the top seven that we wrote about kind of resonated for you, if any of them and I’d love for you to share,

Terry Rich  28:36

let’s talk about executive and the oversight and what’s going on one of the

Karan Rhodes  28:41

executive presence, executive presence. Yes. What does that mean to you?

Terry Rich  28:45

Really, really simple to do, very easy to do. And that is, when you’re standing beside an employee highest to the lowest level within your organization. And they’re proud, they hope and you meet somebody important, and they’re with you. And sometimes people would say, Hey, this is Sally, she works for me. And on and on. And on and on. I really realized and saw the reaction that I wanted when I would say this is Sally, I work with her. And all of a sudden Sally feels important with me that I would acknowledge that we work together and that it’s just not me dictating and cheese, the little minion that runs around and has to execute it. It is so important that you acknowledge and respect people within your organizations that have success, but also the people. We mentioned this earlier to say thank you to the people for the oversight because they get no recognition. And the people if someone fails is to help them in saying you tried something new. We want that in organization. We want innovation, but let’s twist it and see if we can make it work now and work with them. The rewards are so amazing as a leader and an executive when you can do that. Oh, wonderful.

Karan Rhodes  29:56

Thank you so much for sharing about that theory and it’s amazing hazing.

Terry Rich  30:00

This is fun. I appreciate the offer to come on salutely

Karan Rhodes  30:03

All right, well, we’re gonna roll into our final segment, which is called Full Disclosure. And first of all, there’ll be no gotcha questions. Let me just say that up front, we just always like to share a couple of fun things personally about all of our guests. So my first question to you is, what is something that most people don’t know about you that you won’t mind sharing?

Terry Rich  30:24

My first failure. I was on TV just started in cable television, I looked up I didn’t have a five o’clock shadow. And so I decided to write Gillette and tell them how much I love their track to raise their thinking I would get a national TV commercial. And for the two weeks, I figured I’d get a reply. In two weeks, I’d be headed for New York. And those two weeks I felt like most people do and they play Powerball or Mega Millions. What if What if and it started my dreaming? And two weeks to the day I got the letter back so dear Mr. Rich, expressing me Your complete satisfaction with a track to razor we thank you for writing but you’re out there on company shipmates that here’s their address. Let inspiration to be on national television helped me do some promos and ultimately get on the Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show. And many, many other networks, almost every cable and broadcast network I’ve been on all because I failed and failure is the first step to success. Oh, I

Karan Rhodes  31:16

love that. Wow, you have the best stories. I’ve got to learn storytelling from you theory, because you just

Terry Rich  31:23

my uncle was a great storyteller. I think that’s where I got it in my jeans somehow.

Karan Rhodes  31:27

So what is one of your favorite ways to decompress? Because you’re always out there talking, traveling hanging out? Wow.

Terry Rich  31:33

You know what I’m asked off? And what would you do? If you were 21? What would you tell someone who’s 21? Again, I said number one, always raise your hand bathroom needs to be cleaned, volunteer and do it because you’ll be noticed by the boss. Always volunteer something, nobody else wants to do it. That’s the time to raise your hand. The second is what I failed that you must have looked me in the eyes and said, I’m going to ask this question. I wish I learned how to relax more. Because when you have success in a business or an adventure, you always are looking for it again. It’s like cocaine man. I just I love trying new ideas and doing that Daymond John, who’s on Shark Tank, had probably the best thing I’ve heard so far that I’ve been trying. And that is he was written down. I worked with him for an event one time and he was writing down. Thanks. Nice. What do you do? And he said, I’ve got five items, I would do it before I go to bed and I do it when I wake up. Wow, you get that many million dollar ideas? He said no. He said these are ideas. He said I’ve been successful. These are ideas for me. I’m writing down things that will make me happy tomorrow, I just want to do three or four things because it puts me in the mood to be more successful in what I do. Wow. That’s a great way to take the next step.

Karan Rhodes  32:41

Wow, I might have to try that one myself. I always have either the notes thing on my phone or pad or pencil because my brain never shuts off hardly. And I’m always like, Oh, I love that. But I’ve never thought about

Terry Rich  32:54

all the good. You’re trying to get the 100 to get the one good one that’s think about this people who are project managers have it all laid out with this is what we’re going to do this what we’re going to do in this what we’re going to do, did you know that when we sent three men to the moon, they failed 95% of the time, if that had a project manager in charge, and I said okay, 10 987654321 blast off. Okay, good luck, we’ll see in two weeks, but no, as soon as they take off their course correcting over 90% of the time.

Karan Rhodes  33:20

Well, the one thing that I don’t do though, which this is what I took away from your story with Damon is I don’t put what I want to do,

Terry Rich  33:29

that’s really appreciated. Because you find and I’m superstitious, my first big gig that I made mutual mutual dollars, I had a lucky McDonald’s breakfast, I just went in and had it but I made it my lucky breakfast because I had a big deal. And every time today that I have a big deal, or I’m gonna do a big TV appearance. I have my lucky breakfast because in the state of mind, and that’s exactly what his list did for him

Karan Rhodes  33:52

did it? Well, I have a playlist that I use when I’m like psyching myself up to go Oh, I love it. Oh, it’s a mix. Between I love world music. So either world music or rap or country r&b. I just see though, just a different feel just gets me going. So

Terry Rich  34:16

music is amazing. It is.

Karan Rhodes  34:18

Well, oh my gosh, literally, I blinked Terry, and we’re needing to wrap up the podcast. But before you go, I just want to really thank you so much for your time, not even one nugget about 150 nuggets of information. And we really appreciate that. And for our audience listeners. Of course you need to go check out our show notes. I’ll have a ton of information about Terry there and where you can find him on the web. He’s only a click away. And if I can personally give an endorsement he would be a fantastic addition to your next either leadership team meeting session. He has a ton of topics he can talk about. He can tell how engaging he is. So thank you once again, Terry, for joining the League at the top of your game podcast and any last closing thoughts before we let

Terry Rich  35:06

you go? No, let’s just keep having fun in life. That’s my motto.

Karan Rhodes  35:10

Let’s do that. Agreed. All right. Thanks again, listeners. And we’ll see you on the next show. Take care. Bye bye. I hope you enjoyed our conversation today with Terry rich, founder of Rich Keynote LLC. Links to his bio, his entry into our leadership playbook and additional resources can be found in the show notes, both on your favorite podcast platform and at leat, your game podcast.com. And now for Karan’s take on today’s topic of ethics and fraud in the workplace. You know, employee fraud is much more common that most leaders realize. And according to PwC global economic crime and fraud survey, they found that 46% of organizations reported that they had experienced some type of fraud in the past 24 months. That is incredibly insane. And even fraud can manifest itself in many forms. But I wanted to share for the most common types of which you probably should be aware. The first is that and this involves the misuse of company assets, such as wiping office supplies, misusing company vehicles, and using corporate credit cards for personal purchases. It also includes benefits fraud, such as using sick days when you’re healthy, and adjusting timesheets to show that you’re present when you’re actually absent. The next type of death that’s common in the workplace is embezzlement. This is all about the misappropriation or skimming of cash, which involves pocketing cash before it’s entered into something like the cash register or an accounting system. It can also include payroll schemes, duplicate expense reimbursements, bank billing, and the tampering of checks. The third next most common type of fraud is corruption. And corruption covers a wide bucket of illegal behavior, and is the second most common type of employee fraud in the world. But it can include things like bribes, kickbacks, shell companies, and product substitution. And then the last type of fraud I wanted to highlight is data theft. We’re all very familiar with that. But it is very common and leaves companies who rely on intellectual property for their products or services, it leaves them very, very vulnerable. The Association of Certified Fraud examiner’s estimates that the median loss of a company that suffers a single person type of fraud is about $80,000. But when the fraudulent activity involves two or more perpetrators, the median loss climbs to about $200,000. And when incident occurs with four or more perpetrators, the estimated costs rise to more than half a million dollars. So if and when you’re ever faced with an ethics or fraud situation, be sure to start with contacting your local HR department or your local legal department immediately so you can start figuring out what to do next. And if your company does not have the capabilities for that, you definitely should consider hiring a professional investigator of some type. There are many companies that help with that, including Shockley, different leadership. So if you’re ever in the need of such services, head onto our website at Shockley different.com. And submit a request for more information and we’ll get you right to a specialist. Well, that’s all for this week. Thank you so much for listening, everyone, and see you next week. And that’s our show for today. Thank you for listening to the lead at the top of your game podcast, where we help you lead your seat at any employer, business or industry in which you choose to play. You can check out the show notes, additional episodes, bonus resources and also submit guest recommendations on our website at leisure game podcast.com. You can follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn by searching for the name Karan Rhodes with Karan being spelled k r a n. And if you liked the show, the greatest gift you can give would be to subscribe and leave a rating on your podcast platform of choice. This podcast has been a production of shockingly different leadership, a global consultancy which helps organizations execute their people talent development and organizational effectiveness initiatives on an on demand project or contract basis. Huge thanks to our production and editing team for a job well done. The bye for now.