Hello, and welcome to the theory of marketing relativity podcast. I'm Jess Burton, a marketing specialist here at Epic Marketing Consultants Corporation. Let's talk all things marketing and merchandising with our Epic team. Joining me today on today's podcast is Sam Waltz. He has an accomplishments list as long as I am tall. He's a journalist, a founding publisher of the Delaware Business Times. Sam, thank you so much for joining me today.
Sam:Jess, it's great to be here. Thank you very much. I'm flattered to be asked.
Jess:I was looking through your note sheet and I, I mean, I've said it before I there's so many cool things that you've done. I don't even know where to begin.
Sam:I don't know; you go for it.
Jess:So let's start with you. Um, you are you've mostly worked in journalism in the Delaware area. Um, how did you get started with all of that?
Sam:Sure. I'll summarize it, Jess, for you real quick. I actually am a native Midwesterner, I grew up on a farm in the in Illinois in a very, very rural county subsistence agriculture. My father was a farmer. And I was at the University of Illinois, in the mid late 60s. In '67, when Vietnam started to peak, and in my family, when your country goes to war, you go to war. So I dropped out and volunteered. I went into the army, and the army in its infinite wisdom said to this old Illinois farm boy, we're gonna send you to Delaware and the Philadelphia area. So the army assigned me to work in Center City, Philadelphia, during Vietnam, I was there '68 to '70 in army counterintelligence, and so we were it was, it was a time that was for people as young as you are very reminiscent to what America has gone to in the last year, a time of turmoil and turbulence, and I was right in the middle of it. I got out of the army in 1970, went back home to Illinois, I was a reporter full time, finishing my degrees and teaching journalism at Illinois. And the newspaper here in Delaware, the statewide newspaper in 1975, recruited me back out here covering politics. So Jess, I got here in April of 1975, 46 years ago, and I got to cover this young, fresh faced newly minted US Senator, a guy named Joseph, Joe, something. I knew Joe Joe Biden, when he before he was even 35, covered him. I covered Delaware politics, the governor, the legislature. And I've just been, and since then, since April 1975. That just put me squarely in the middle of Delaware public life. So I've been involved in the media. I've been involved in corporate public affairs, I worked for DuPont for 16 years, just, you know, a whole variety. I've been active in the community active with my church, active with the chamber. I'm on the board of the Little Sisters of the Poor, where I joke that I'm their token Protestant. I'm on the I'm on the board of the African American Empowerment Fund, where I'm the only grey white guy on the board, working on social issues and social causes. So just a variety of things just to make life a rich experience.
Jess:That is, I hope that one day I can have as many amazing experiences as I'm sure that you have had. Working in I guess we can start right at the beginning working in like covering Delaware politics. I'm a lifelong Delawaren, I was born here, raised here. I've lived here all 30 years of my life. Covering politicians, I know you probably you get to know them really well. So what makes for a good authentic relationship as a journalist so that you can report the most authentic stories.
Sam:I think it's a fair statement, Jess, to say that both journalists and the people they cover have a desire for and benefit from an authentic relationship a "get to know you" relationship. It will vary depending on how much difference there is between what a what a report what a politician says she or he is and what they really are. But literally our community has been one of those communities where what you see is what you get. And I remember when I got here, I'd been here about six months. And I got a call from the senior judge in Kent County. And he was a generation older than me. He called me up one day at the end of December, and he said, Sam, and he always called everybody, son. Son, do you want to go with Zach go hunting this Sunday? And I said, Bill, I'd be happy to. And he said, All right, I'll pick you up 6 am. We'll go out night flying and all that. I said, Bill, that's great. I said, By the way, I just happen to think Bill, I don't have a Delaware license yet. And he said, son, You're with me. But it was just that everyday kind of openness, transparency. Now, we didn't need to worry about a game warden stopping us because I was there with the senior judge in Kent County. And that was that was the way that you know, that's not going to happen quite like that today. But it was that measure of authenticity. And it continues. One of the guys that I've known longest since 1976, is our US Senator Tom Carper. And Tom is originally from West Virginia went to Ohio State, he and I are both baseball guys. So when every year when I go to baseball spring training, what you can begin to do when your hair gets as gray or white as mine is, and the kids are all raised. I text him on how his team, he's a Detroit fan. So I'll text him back and forth about how his team is, is looking. And it's just, you know, it's it's a relationship of people. And and the the benefit of the years is that you're able to develop that that quality of intimacy.
Jess:Absolutely, it's that kind of getting to know them as a person, so that you can better inform the public on them as a person and as a politician as an official. I think I think Delaware definitely being a very small state. And I think this might be something that only small states can say. I feel like Delaware being a very small state has allowed us as Delawareans to kind of know our politicians a little bit better. I laugh all the time. I'm 30. I went to AI DuPont High School. And that's where Joe Biden votes. And I remember, you know, telling people like, oh, like, you know, all the time, like we go into vote for something or you're driving to the grocery store and you run into him and his wife getting groceries at Janssens or like lining up in our band room to vote. I was like, that's just Delaware.
Sam:Yeah. I the other day, I was at Walgreens at the pharmacy. And standing in line in front of me was the former president of Winterthur, the former president of the University of Delaware. And I said in Delaware, you know, if you want to get to see people who are your generation, the place where you always see them is at the Walgreens pharmacy line. Joe and I had the same pharmacist for 20 years. I get my stuff now through the VA and Joe's I'm sure a special channel, but I used to see Joe in Walgreens all the time. And, and you know, he I live a block from him now. I've been to his house, you know? And and I mentored his daughter and stuff like that. That's that's our small state.
Jess:Absolutely. I think that's just kind of, that's what Delaware. I think that's what small states are. I mean, I feel like the Northeast can probably talk about it more than out west because those states get kind of big, but yeah, definitely. That's only a Delaware, Delaware ism.
Sam:Yes.
Jess:So what has kind of kept you going in the journalism sphere, you're a founding publisher of the Delaware Business Times, so how did you end up in that position?
Sam:Yeah, well, the you know, my, my, everyone starts somewhere doing something, you can end up being the president of the bank and you started as a teller. You can end up running the radio station, and you started as a broadcaster. So you all start. So I started as a journalist, and that was my ambition coming out of high school. And I got into that I came to know business pretty well because of my background here and I came to know Delaware pretty well. And the Delaware Business Times is owned by a family, the Martinelli family who own Delaware Today and a variety of other publications, and the man who is CEO is one of my longtime close friends. And and I think late 2013, early 2014, he began to talk about this and began to twist my arm. I, I said, Rob, I'm unemployable. I'm a consultant. I'm self employed. I, so but anyway, he twisted my arm. And so I took a year off from my consulting practice, he had always wanted to start a Delaware business publication. So I started it, I named it, I created it, hired the staff, I still write for it on occasion on columns. I better sit down and write a column of reflections on Joe Biden's State of the Union speech tonight and that kind of thing. So, So I really it was it was a matter of the background in knowing Delaware and knowing business and having a background in journalism publishing that really brought that all together.
Jess:That is awesome. Yeah, I think that's, I love hearing a good story about starting from the beginning and finding your way up the up to the top. Not to switch topics, but I know when I was reading through your notes, I noticed a small little bullet point about helping produce a halftime show.
Sam:Yes. And there was this football team.
Jess:Blows my mind.
Sam:Well, there was this football team from Pittsburgh. I'm struggling to remember the name. Can you remember that, Jess?
Jess:Oh, I don't know.
Sam:Anyway, I say that since you're from Pittsburgh, and my wife is from Pittsburgh, and you're both Steelers fans and my mother in law who is 88 lives and dies with the Steelers, when I was still a kid just 30 years old and had just joined DuPont, I was handling kind of External Affairs marketing PR for DuPont's mylar polyester film, the world's largest polyester film business. And the opportunity came along, I met a guy who basically worked for the NFL commissioner Pete Roselle. And this man's full time job every year was to produce a halftime show the Super Bowl. So I arranged with him to put mylar in the halftime show of Super Bowl 14, January 1980, the Steelers over the Rams, the last of the big iron curtain teams. And we had mylar up with people finished its halftime show, they rolled out these huge rolls of metalized mylar. So the whole stadium was done in Pasadena at the Rose Bowl look like a glittering concave mirror and the entire section, 101,000 people there, we had arranged for them all to have cards like a card section at a college football game. And they all held up these mylar cards. So the whole stadium and the field and the seating area, it looked like this concave mirrored surface. And that whole thing got covered in the lead column in the Monday New York Times about the Superbowl 14. Red Smith, probably the greatest sports columnist for the last 75 years, had to write his column before the game was ever played. So I met with him, briefed him on it, told him what it was gonna look like. And his column that was written before that all happened was all about mylar and a halftime show at the Super Bowl.
Jess:That is so I love all the little nuancey things like don't get me wrong, I love myself some football and a good Super Bowl game. But I thoroughly enjoy all of the like fun facts like the DuPont mylar in the 1980 Super Bowl. Like that kind of stuff. Just it's so fascinating to me how all of that kind of comes to be.
Sam:Yeah, it is. Well, it life is about how you connect with people. And I've been fortunate, I've been blessed through my professional society, through my faith through all the, through the military, through all the things that have been blessed with incredible personal network of people, where we help each other and that's how it works. I was able, Jess, to be the elected national global head of my industry's professional society for external affairs. It would be kind of a counterpart of a doctor heading the AMA or a lawyer heading the ABA. I I've mentored people, I had a guy friend of mine, call me a couple years ago he said Sam, you help people in transition. My niece's husband is a senior level guy working for the government. He's thinking about getting out. He's in his mid 40s, would you talk to him? I said, Sure, sure, Greg happy to talk with him. So he put the call together, he didn't tell me what the guy did. Turned out this guy was the number four guy running one of those, I won't say which three, but one of those three letter government agencies. And, and he, so here I am sitting here, an old Illinois farm boy, mentoring this guy through a significant career change. And he's now in private equity, but helping him navigate through the kinds of issues that he had to do that. And then, a couple of weeks ago, I got a call from a young guy who's from, I think it was from Kenya or Nigeria just happened to find me and Sam, could I talk to you about, you know, where I am in my career and where I'm going, I said, Sure, happy to do that. And my professional society assigned me a young woman to mentor. She's about six, seven years ago, she's now 29, native of South America sitting in a remote rural part of Kentucky, is 29, and is openly gay. And you know, I have a have a particular sensitivity to where she is in her life and have been happy to help counsel her through a variety of professional and career issues there. So I just I, you know, every day when you get to touch someone's life can be a blessing. And it's not only a blessing to them, it's a blessing to all of us. And that's just how I how I feel about that Jess.
Jess:I have goosebumps; I love that. I, I always appreciate someone who gives back in every in any way that they can, and is it and stays involved in things and doesn't just say, Oh, I can retire. I'm done with everything now. Um, are you have you thought about retiring? Because it seems like you just keep going?
Sam:Well, you're only about the 10th person this week to ask me that, Jess. And I tell people, I regularly you're seeing the white hair. I'm 73. I still work 60 hours a week, most weeks, then people say Sam, buddy, when are you going to retire? And I say when you read my obituary, you can assume I've retired.
Jess:That's a good one. That is a good one. I've never heard that one before. That is a good one.
Sam:I had to I add to that, Jess, I say, as somebody who comes from a faith background, I say, we're all going to be carried out feet first one day. And at the, at the end of the day, we're all going to go stand in front of our maker. And I don't think he's going to care what my drive looked like off the tee, or whether I ever sank a hole in one. God's gonna say all right, Sam, I gave you a toolkit to help people. How did you use that toolkit to the end?
Jess:I agree. I love it. That is great. Um, how do you I guess, how is the wrong question? Mentoring, how do you find your mentees? Do people just say, call Sam and he'll chat with you? Or how does that work?
Sam:Yeah, that's mostly mostly somebody, somebody will there, there are people who I will go out of my way to mentor and there are people who may have a tougher road to mentors in their own community, if I can say it that way. So I, my mentees are disproportionately, for example, people who are African American. I've got several who I've mentored there, but I look at the issues. And I have going back to the 60s, when I was vice president of the campus, it's not in my notes, but when I was vice president of the campus Democrats at the University of Illinois, we all have to own the social issues around diversity. And it's not just racial diversity. Two of my mentees are young women who are gay, and we all need to bring a degree. You know, even in the Baptist Church, where I go to church, I've spoken out there in welcoming same gender couples. That's part of the what it's about, you know, in society, in life. But frankly, most of these folks have found me and that's fine and I'm happy to happy to be found if I can say it that way.
Jess:That's awesome. I think having as someone who was on the other end of the age number and was younger, I think it's great to have mentors. And it's always great when you find a mentor that is just as invested in you as you are invested in you. I have one final question for you. If you could go back and tell yourself when you first started, after you got out of the army, when you first started. As a journalist, if you could give yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?
Sam:Well, that's a tough one, Jess. I've never been asked that before. Ay, ay, ay. I'm not sure how to answer that I pretty well have lived life on, on the terms that I've wanted to live, I don't spend a lot of time and regret. I, my, my wife and I've been married to my wife from Pittsburgh, 16 years, my first marriage was to someone who's not a Christian. And I probably did not give that part of my life the attention that I should have, as a as a young husband, as a father, and, and that is an area where I could have and should have improved my game. But when you look at I'm a big Stephen Covey fan. And when you look at Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, be proactive, begin with the end in mind. Think Win, win his seventh habit, sharpen the saw, you know, meaning work on your game. And what Stephen Covey talks about are the seven things that I think are essential to any of us. And I've been there, I love that. There's also I would say this, there is a body of literature in sociology and psychology called locus of control, and locus of control, you think of as a continuum, internal or external. And someone who's got an external locus of control, believes that life happens to them, they're not empowered; someone who has an internal locus of control has a sense that they can influence the important things in their life. And I've always kind of operated on the premise that I want to, I want to influence where my life comes out. Control is a myth; there is no control. You know, there's an old joke got man plans, and God laughs But, but it, you know, so, so you do want to plan, but you want to be able to have some idea of where you're going. And and, you know, I don't know that you've got to look out when you're 30 years old, Jess, where you are, and say, I know where I want to be at 80 or 70. But being able to look down the road and and look at where do I want to go? And what kind of person do I want to be? I don't know that I thought about it, those kind of terms when I was 22, and getting out of the army 23. But it's, it's a philosophy, I think that has has ended up serving me well in my life.
Jess:You've had so many great things, I think, definitely just in something that I consciously have had to start working on is just kind of like owning my decisions and not thinking about, well, what if I had done that and like having a regret, because I feel like I tell people all the time. Um, you know, I don't regret any decisions I've made because I've either benefited from it, or I've learned something from it. I think as long as that's your takeaway, you're doing pretty good.
Sam:Well, you're going to make mistakes, we're all going to make mistakes. I look back at that. And if you want me to catalog those for you, we could talk next week, and I have the list of, you know, all the stuff that I've done that I probably shouldn't have done or I screwed up or whatever. We've all done that and you learn from it, you move on and you try not to beat yourself up.
Jess:Absolutely. Now, Sam, if people want to reach out to you or find you on social media, or send you an email, where can they find you?
Sam:Well, the easiest way to find me is for business people through LinkedIn. I'm a big LinkedIn user. Just Sam Waltz, S A M, W A L T Z, I always say Waltz, like the dance, and that's easy to remember, Sam Waltz. My email is Sam Waltz at Sam Waltz. And so I'll get on that real quick Jess, I used to work with this fellow great he became a great friend Les Samajik and Les was a Hungarian refugee in the '50s. And he and I worked in a small office and every time I'd say on the phone, I was in my 20s Waltz, Waltz like to dance. He would laugh, and he did that repeatedly. And one day he's calling out, he's spelling out his last name. Samadhi. And he said to somebody Samadhi, just like the dance.
Jess:Oh, good move. That is too funny. I that was a good one. Yeah, I was gonna, do you know how to waltz?
Sam:Oh, whatever. I you know, nobody's got to pay any attention to my dancing, or my singing; my wife shushes me I, I you know, I love country and western, both kinds, as they say in the Blues Brothers. Both kinds of music, and, and so on. But no, I'm not. I'm not a great dancer. And I'm not a great singer, although I can make my way around.
Jess:Well, thank you so much for joining me, Sam. We're gonna have to have you back sometime. All right. Well, Jess, it's a delight. I hope we meet and you mentioned going to AI DuPont High School, and my office for my consulting practice. We used to be in that little center right in front of AI DuPont High School. Yeah.
Sam:When you used, when you were underclassmen, if you were walking along 52 you walked right in front of my office.
Jess:That is too funny. Yeah, we walked all the time to go grab between sports practice and marching band practice and whatnot. We would run to Janssens to grab some dinner before we had to go back to school. So I probably like walked right by you and never even knew it.
Sam:It's a great high school. I'm a fan of AI DuPont and, and so on. So very good, Jess, it's been a delight. Thank you. Thank you to all the great folks at Epic. It's a great firm and I'm, I'm a big fan of Epic. Thank you.
Jess:Thank you, Sam. Thank you all for tuning in this week. We hope this theory is relative to your marketing needs. Make sure you subscribe to get notified of our latest episodes.