Co-Founder and Principal Rick Bailey on “Starter Stories”

Founder of Enrollify Zach Busekrus hosts “Starter Stories” a podcast series telling the stories of founders of leading higher education consulting and professional services. Zach invited Rick Bailey to give the backstage story on the start of RHB. Following is the transcript or you can listen here.

Rick Bailey:
In the book, was a question. “If time, money and education were not an issue, what would you do with your life?” And he found that fascinating. So he said, “Rick, why don’t you read this book and see what you think about that.” I thought, I don’t have time to read this book, but okay. You’re my father-in-law. I’ll read the book. So, I got to that question, I thought, “oh, okay, I’m going to do this.” So I got out some paper and made the list. And I realized quickly that none of the things I was doing was on that list. What was on that list, near the top was go to work for an ad agency.

Zach Busekrus:
Welcome to Starter Stories, a podcast that explores the stories behind the world’s leading education technology companies and education consultancies, and the people who created them. In each episode, you’ll hear about the grit, the strategies, the wins, the failures, and the serendipity that transpired to take a half-baked idea and bring it to life. Starter Stories. As a podcast of Enrollify a learning community for enrollment managers and higher education marketers explore our other shows like fanatical Fridays and CRM, prov, or access creative ideas on how to better your student recruitment campaigns via our videos, blogs, and e-courses at enrollify.org. I’m your host, Zach Busekrus. Enjoy the show.

Zach Busekrus:
In a moment, you’ll meet Rick Bailey. If you were to ask Rick in the eighth grade, what he wanted to be when he grew up, he would’ve told you an ad guy, an architect, or a secret agent. Rick’s father and grandfather were both ministers. And they impressed upon him the importance of doing work that honored God and added value to the world. After working in advancement at Spring Arbor University . for several years, Rick was presented with an opportunity to work at Imprint, an ad agency and creative services firm that had decided to grow it’s higher education services portfolio. Rick learned a lot during those eight years about the creative process and client care, but in all that time, nothing could have prepared him for how the agency crashed and ultimately burned. Tune in to hear the humble, yet inspiring story of how the demise of imprint led to the birth of RHB, one of the most respected consultancies in the education marketing and branding space today.

Zach Busekrus:
So, Rick, I’m curious if someone were to ask you what you wanted to be when you grew up back in eighth grade, what is it that you would have said?

Rick Bailey :
I love that question. That is such a random year. Let me give context: that was probably around 1967 for me. One of my early heroes was Darren Stevens from Bewitched. I thought anybody who could have a career walking around with a cool portfolio and walking into the best restaurants in town, looking pretty dapper— probably had the world by the tail. He was an early inspiration and in eighth grade, I would’ve still had in my head that I wanted to be an ad guy. If I couldn’t do that, one of my favorite pastimes was drawing floor plans on graph paper, and I would design houses and condo complexes before condo complexes were hot. But I used to imagine how houses could fit together and stack in different places. And I’d draw them out. I had just volumes of these little drawings on draft paper and just thought that was the Bee’s Knee’s. (There’s an expression you don’t hear anymore, Bee’s Knee’s.) In the year 1967 we were still in the cold war and one of our neighborhood games we’d organize and play was secret agent. There was a part of me that liked the adventure and the danger of being a secret agent. I think there was a little bit in me that wanted to do that too. So I would have said an ad guy, an architect, or a secret agent in eighth grade, probably.

Zach Busekrus:
There’s a lot of diversity in that.

Rick Bailey :
There is. I think I’m doing a little bit of all three of those things in my life now.

Zach Busekrus:
Well, look at that. I want to unpack that in just a second and hear you correlate these three pursuits to what you’re doing now. Would you have described yourself as a creative kid or how would you have categorized yourself in hindsight, of course, as a child?

Rick Bailey :
Yeah, likely. I had a strong creative streak as a kid. I was always making, building or doing some art project. I was really interested in that. I had pretty early leadership skills. I would organize those secret agent outings with the neighborhood kids. Actually a few times I would organize the whole neighborhood as an ad agency. Some would be in financing and some would work in the agency.

Zach Busekrus:
Really? What did that look like? Rather than like playing house or playing tag or whatever it is. You were playing ad agency.

Rick Bailey :
Yeah. Yeah. That’s a little weird. I know.

Zach Busekrus:
No. I am curious. What did that look like?

Rick Bailey:
Well, somebody would be the client and they’d need some ad, so we’d set up a little photo studio. It was usually broomsticks and buckets for lights and somebody’s disposable camera. We’d get some models and sit still. One of the people in the neighborhood would sit still while one or two of us took pictures with no lights.There were just buckets. Then we would wait for the photos. You know in those days we had to wait forever. It wasn’t digital. Then we, you know, create little ads for the client, whatever it was. Sometimes it was some client who wanted an ad for their car shop or something. You know, just bizarre stuff.

Zach Busekrus:
Was there any bartering happening or any sort of like exchanging of goods between the client and the advertiser?

Rick Bailey:
Yeah, we would turn over some kind of ad that we had created. Some goofy thing usually with one the pictures that we had taken. This would go over a couple of weeks. We’d create something and hand it off to them. No money was exchanged, but there was the process of somebody in the neighborhood being a client, the guy who owned the car shop, the auto dealer, and he’d asked for the ad. Then we’d come up with something and hand it back to them on a piece of notebook paper with a real photo taped onto it.

Zach Busekrus:
That is the best childhood game that I’ve ever heard of. That’s interesting. At the time we were more interested in, you know, climbing trees, sneaking out of parents’ houses and hanging on the corner, doing things we shouldn’t have been doing.

Rick Bailey :
We did horrible things in the night.

Zach Busekrus:
This was all during the day. These were daytime activites.

Rick Bailey :
This was late afternoon.

Zach Busekrus:
I’m curious. So ad guy, architect, secret agent. You said there are elements of those three things that you get to do now. And I’m curious, how do you see that? How does that work?

Rick Bailey :
Well, certainly the ad guy has been satisfied with the volumes of creative solution work we’ve done and the marketing communications work we’ve done. It’s taken many forms and it’s certainly not a photograph taped to a piece of notebook paper anymore, although that’s a really good idea. I can see that pretty clearly. The elements of writing and design that are at play there. The architect part has been more of the engineering, the science, the solution part of what I’m doing. Maybe even the consulting part, hearing a problem and creating a path toward a solution.

Zach Busekrus:
I would imagine even the architecture that is involved in building an agency, right. The development, the management involved as well. But go ahead, secret agent.

Rick Bailey :
Yeah. Putting those pieces together not just the implementation of a campaign, but everything that goes into it. The research and discovery, the strategic aspect of it, the solution itself, the implementation. Yeah. It’s a little bit like building houses or buildings. The secret agent thing is probably satisfied a lot by my interest in research. My personality scores always tell me I’m a quick study and my next big need is research and information. So that probably stems from that secret agent. Trying to dig for stuff that other people don’t know or at least finding stuff.

Zach Busekrus:
Wow. And I’m curious.

Rick Bailey :
I haven’t thought about that until just now, but as I said those three things, I thought “oh, gee, that’s kind of what I do. “

Zach Busekrus:
It sounds like it. We talked about what you were doing in eighth grade, but as you made your way through high school, did that shift at all? Was the idea of leaning into advertising or doing something creative professionally? Was that a goal?

Rick Bailey :
Yeah, I thought I would go to school to study architecture. I wasn’t sure quite where. By the time I was in high school, that architecture bug was really heavy. I still kept that creative streak, but I liked the combination of science and creative that architecture represented. I liked that there was a result, or a plan as a result of work that tapped into both my creative and my research interests. That’s not at all what I ended up doing, but I thought I would. I looked at architecture schools. I wanted to go to California. That would have been 1970, 1971 that I was looking pretty hard. I could think of nothing better than being in sunshine and sandals. I thought I’d go to California. I ended up going to school in Michigan about two hours from where I lived. At my house, I grew up in a parsonage. My father was a minister. My parents exemplified a life of service and passion. It, wasn’t hard for me to take leaps about how I would put my strengths or abilities to use. And I always wanted to be in a service line and that could be professional service.

Zach Busekrus:
I was just going to ask about how your parents thought about success and how success was characterized at home. What were their expectations for you? If any?

Rick Bailey :
Yeah, I didn’t feel like my parents put me in a box at all. They let me explore a ton of things. I was involved in all kinds of different things and my parents were great about that. I think they did as well as they could to not treat me as a preacher’s kid. Much to the dismay of people who attended our church, but my parents protected me quite well, I think, from the stigma of that. Certainly their idea of success would have been to do the Lord’s work, to do the work of God. Their dominant expressions to me were about scholarship and service. Learning as much as I could and being the best I could be. Excellence was pushed. My dad might’ve been a perfectionist. He wasn’t harsh about it, but you knew there was a bar. He wasn’t dark about it at all. He was encouraging. Surely for both of my parents, there was this sense of encouragement to achieve. You need to do your best and strive toward excellence. But that theme of service, if you’re going to be excellent, use what you’ve got, use your gifts for good purposes.

Zach Busekrus:
What did your grandfather do?

Rick Bailey :
He was a minister too. I never knew him. He passed before I was born. He was a minister. My father’s dad was a minister. My mother’s father. I never knew either. He was a boxer, a wrestler, a professional wrestler, actually. Think about that in 1920.

Zach Busekrus:
My great grandfather was actually also a professional boxer.

Rick Bailey :
Would you look at that?

Zach Busekrus:
Yeah, probably around the same, the same time. I obviously never met him. I’m curious. Was there any sort of, not disappointment, but was there an expectation that you would kind of carry on the family business, so to speak and become a preacher yourself? Or were your parents pretty open to you going to college and pursuing a professional career?

Rick Bailey :
I think they were very open to it. I think they would have relished my doing that. And in fact, when I got to college, I ultimately changed my study plan and ended up in philosophy and religion, thinking I might go into some form of church-related, or some kind of ministry-related career path. I thought seriously about seminary before I chose to go to grad school. In fact I did an internship during college in a role as an associate pastor. (Phone ringing: Do we need to do that again because the phone rang?)

Zach Busekrus:
No, no, let, let it go. It’s nice and organic.

Rick Bailey :
I did an internship there in college in a role as an associate pastor thinking I might end up doing something like that. I had some reticence about doing that. I didn’t feel like I was the person for that. But it interested me and because I had it modeled at home, it felt familiar. As it turned out, I got seriously sidetracked. Right after I did that internship, I finished school. I can tell you more about this if you want to know, but I stopped out of school for a year and a half and traveled with a music group.

Zach Busekrus:
Wow. And this is at Spring Arbor, right?

Rick Bailey :
Yeah. So my schedule for graduation was a little off and I ended up finishing mid year of 76 maybe. Before I left, I had been real involved as a student at Spring Arbor and I even worked in the development office on some projects. The president of the university stopped me at lunch not too long before I finished that semester and said, “how would you feel about working for the college?” And I said, “Doing what?” And he said, ” Well, we’ve got a guy who’s leaving and he is the director of the annual fund. Would you be the next director of the annual fund?”

Zach Busekrus:
Wow.

Rick Bailey :
And I said “Really? What’s an annual fund.” And, I did. That’s how it worked out. That kind of put me on the path of my interest in higher ed. That’s kind of a weird turn from architecture, to some kind of ministry to working in higher ed in fundraising at the time. For a little bit in there I also wanted to be a child psychologist.

Zach Busekrus:
Wow. Too many interests, too many interests, you know?

New Speaker:
Exactly. What did you do during your year off? So you took a year and a half off. You said you traveled with a music group. What were you doing?

Speaker 1:
You weren’t born yet. But in the, in the early seventies, there was this kind of outgrowth of the sixties, hippies and love movement. A place for touring music groups. Some of them were kind of Americana and some of them were peace and love, and some of them were more religiously or faith related. And there was this national group called Free Spirit. A friend of mine had traveled with this group and suggested I do the same. And I auditioned and ended up traveling with this group with 10 other college students from around the country. And we had gigs, we traveled in a van and had gigs all over the place and sang our little hearts out two or three times a day. In high schools and college campuses, churches, service groups and shopping malls. Whoever would listen, we’d go and sing. We had somebody who set it all up. We just went and sang where they told us to.

Zach Busekrus:
And you were a vocalist.

Rick Bailey :
I was a vocalist. Yeah.

Zach Busekrus:
Interesting. Interesting. Did you study music at all in high school, or you just had a good voice?

Speaker 1:
I had interest in music in high school and I, uh, had music as a minor in college. I studied voice, but that hasn’t been part of my professional career.

Zach Busekrus:
You guys don’t have like a side package for a singing services.

Rick Bailey :
No. No.

Zach Busekrus:
Okay. Okay. Maybe 2022.

Rick Bailey :
Tammy gets serenaded every morning. Nobody else.

Zach Busekrus:
During your time in college then before you get this gig, as you’re finishing up and you’re going to be the director of the annual fund. what were some of the classes that stood to you most during your, during your undergraduate career?

Rick Bailey :
Gosh, that’s another great question. I had amazing, an amazing set of professors. I will give credit to Spring Arbor for hiring well. Their faculty was awesome. I’m shocked at how much I still reflect on a slew of great courses. One of my philosophy professors Bill Winget, was just remarkable. And I can think of several courses that I had with him that, that probably did more in shaping my critical thinking skills. I think he helped me understand the importance of logical thinking. That is probably been a terrific contribution. I would say one of my favorite courses was one I sort of ended up in on accident. It was a weird thing. In my last semester, I still had some gen ed courses to finish. And one of them was in literature. They had this course for education majors in children’s literature. I saw that in the catalog and I thought, I’m going to take this children’s lit class. It’s gotta be a breeze. You know, it’ll give me a little more free time. It can’t be too difficult. So I went into register for classes. This is back when you couldn’t do it online, you had to stand in line, wait your turn and talk to somebody, and fill out forms.

Zach Busekrus:
Gosh, what a headache.

Rick Bailey :
Yeah. It was just awful., but I went in to register for classes, and as it turned out the provost saw me at the registration window. He came up and started to chat and noticed that I was filling out my course schedule. And I put children’s lit on there. He said, “you can’t take that.” I said, why not? He said, “well, that’s no good for you. You’re not going to teach are you?” I said, “no, but this would be an interesting class”. He said, “no, not for you. So you’re going to take Victoria Literature.” I said, “no, not Victorian Literature. I haven’t had any lit classes. That’s an upper division course; I don’t want to take that.” And he said, “no you’re going to take Victorian lit.” And I was so irritated that he wouldn’t let me not take Victorian lit.

Zach Busekrus:
Did you have a previous relationship with him?

Rick Bailey :
No.

Zach Busekrus:
He just came out of the blue?

Rick Bailey :
I think he was trying to be fatherly. He was, he was like a bad old academic dean.

Zach Busekrus:
I have an image in my head. Yeah. I know the type.

Rick Bailey :
He was that vision. I signed up for this class so reluctantly, but it was one of my favorite classes that I took. As I was taking it, I thought, what a shame I didn’t study more literature. The professor was outstanding. Her name was Beth McDonald. I was just cleaning out books in my office because we’re getting ready to move. And I still have my Victorian Lit book.

Zach Busekrus:
Wow.

Rick Bailey :
That’s how important it was to me. Kind of weird.

Zach Busekrus:
Were there aspects of either the storytelling or the writing style and architecture of content that spoke to you and kind of informed how you think about being creative, how you think about storytelling and campaign concepting today?

Rick Bailey :
You’re asking a great question. So much of that literature was poetry and the immense symbolism found in the words of poetry probably triggered in me some magical sense of using particularly metaphor or simile to express something. Ask anybody and you’ll find out I’m huge on metaphors as a way to tell a story. I’m guessing that that might have in fact influenced me more than I think. I’m processing this as I’m having this conversation. It’s just a great question, but I’ll bet you’re right. I bet the depth found in those Victorian expressions also fed my interest in the depth that I found in philosophy and looking for meaning.

Zach Busekrus:
I also think about poetry as a form of the more artistic forms of writing and the idea of being incredibly selective with words and what you include, what you exclude. How you communicate a concrete idea in an often abstract format to me. The people that are masters at that are somewhat akin to the people that are really great copywriters and really great creatives. I see a lot of symmetry there. So it’s interesting. It’s interesting fast forwarding to where RHB is today. It’s [RHB’s] roots being with you and your story. I do wonder how much of the influence of the craft today came from those early college literature courses.

Rick Bailey :
I’m sure. What’s funny is last night I stayed up in bed writing haiku.

Zach Busekrus:
Wow.

Rick Bailey :
All day yesterday I had had this thought going through my head. One of the thoughts had seven syllables to it. Last night I thought “I’m going to put that down,” then it made me think, “oh, if I could get five, seven, five, I’d have haiku out of this.” I laid awake last night, writing haiku on my iPad. I’ll check it out in a few days and decide of it is worthy.
Zach Busekrus:
I love that. I love that’s how spend your evenings sometimes. I wish I could say the same, but hey, maybe one day.
Rick Bailey :
I don’t have little kids or anything so I can do stuff like that.
Zach Busekrus:
That’s right. I’m curious to hear a little bit more about the the origin story of RHB. So you get this job as a director of the annual fund as you’re preparing to leave college. How much time do you spend working at Spring Arbor? What do you do between then and the launch of RHB?
Rick Bailey :
We’re going to dig deep here.
Zach Busekrus:
Good, good. I love it.
Rick Bailey :
All right. So I went to work for Spring Arbor in January. I did well and loved it. I just absolutely loved it far more than I thought I would.
Zach Busekrus:
Were you in fundraising the whole time?
Rick Bailey :
No. I don’t know why, but I was given immense opportunity and responsibility there. I felt like the college president and my boss, the Vice President for Advancement took me under their wings. They allowed me to progress through the advancement office, doing almost everything. I did major gifts for a while. They put me in charge of Alumni and Parent Relations. They put me in charge of what was then known as Public Relations and Publications.
Zach Busekrus:
You’re a popular guy with all those phone calls.
Rick Bailey :
I’m at the office.
Zach Busekrus:
It’s real. It’s raw. So they give you immense responsibility. A lot of trust.
Rick Bailey :
I got to do all kinds of things. Then we had a presidential shift. I thought I would be gone, but the new president asked if I would stay. If it were organized today, it would be the CMOs job. They took the advancement work and took the fundraising part out. They kept all the relational work separated. He asked me to lead all the relational things. So I didn’t have to do annual fund or major gifts anymore, but I was cultivating all those relationships with alumni, parents, churches, corporations and anything else in communications. In my last few years there, he asked me to also oversee admissions. If there was an external group or an audience that we needed to connect with, that was under my purview.
Zach Busekrus:
That is a lot of responsibility.
Rick Bailey :
Yeah. It was a horrible amount of responsibility and way too much for as young as I was. I ended up being the president’s right hand. I traveled with him and his wife all the time. I did all the outreach stuff. In the middle of that, we had a child. I was rarely home and I didn’t care for that. So I started to think I needed to look for something else. But it was a wonderful opportunity. I’m really grateful for what I was given. I was also trying to go to graduate school and work on a degree in higher education administration. So it just got full. That was a course of about eight years while I was in admissions, I was working on a communications enrollment communications plan. We were working with a firm in South Bend, Indiana called Imprint. I got to know the people at Imprint. One day while they were visiting, they asked, “could we take you to dinner?” So we went to dinner and at that point they asked if I would ever consider leaving Spring Arbor and coming to their firm and give more guts to the higher ed services that they wanted to deliver. They were an ad agency for all kinds of stuff. They didn’t really have focus and they wanted somebody to cluster the moorings of a higher ed capacity.
Zach Busekrus:
So they wined and dined you and said, ” come on over, Rick”.
Rick Bailey :
Yeah. I need to tell you Zach, that there are two things. I’m a person of faith, I believe in God and I believe in prayer. So anything I tell you about this has got an underpinning of a deeper story. For the sake of time, I’m going to skip over that. I don’t want to go on without saying that because as chopped up as it all is, and parts of it are horrible, as I look back over that it fits together perfectly for me. I can see how it all works out and why it worked out. Those stakes for me are pretty important.
Zach Busekrus:
Do you mind just sharing, as much as you’re comfortable with, maybe even just a couple of silhouettes some of what you’re getting at?
Rick Bailey :
Sure. At the point where I thought “we’ve got to do something else”, I was going night and day and traveling too much. I felt that my life was mostly committed meetings. Most of the time I was sitting on the president’s cabinet. I remember sitting at a commencement with the Vice Presidents of the University, all seated there on the platform. I looked at them all and they were all about 120 years old. Compared to them, I thought I was about 12. I thought, “what the heck am I doing here?” “How did I get here?” “Why did they think I could do this?” I was running ragged and feeling like, is this even what I want to do with my life? My father in law, who was also a minister had been to a conference where he picked up a book that was life-changing for him. In the book, was question “if time, money and education were not an issue, what would you do with your life?” He found that fascinating. So he said, “Rick, why don’t you read this book and see what you think about that?”
Rick Bailey :
I thought, I do not have time to read this book, but okay. You’re my father-in-law, I’ll read the book. So I got to that question, I thought, I’m going to do this. So I got out some paper and made the list. I realized quickly that none of the things I was doing was on that list. What was on that list at the top was, go to work for an ad agency. And that thing from being a little kid was still stuck in there. Never thought I would do that, but it was on the list. So after I made the list and realized I had that “oh my” moment. “I’m not doing what I think would be part of my life”. I asked Tammy to do the same thing. So she read the book and made her list. We swapped lists and looked at them. They were amazingly alike. Very complimentary. But hers didn’t have any of the plans we had made together.
Rick Bailey :
So we both kind of gulped. Then we prayed together and just held onto those lists. This was alarming to us. This didn’t feel like the path we were on. And these are things somewhat buried in our heart. “So look over the list, God. If this is supposed to be part of our lives, get us there.” It was a faith thing for us in that we had no idea how those things would occur, but we couldn’t not acknowledge the fact that we were able to draw them out in that moment. So we’d prayed about it and went on. About two weeks later, was when I had a conversation with the folks at Imprint, an ad agency. They asked, “would you be interested in coming to work here?”
Zach Busekrus:
Look at that timing.
Rick Bailey :
Yeah. Tam was with me at dinner and we looked at each other and we had both seen that list two weeks before and just prayed about it. We thought, okay, that’s more than coincidental.
Zach Busekrus:
Seriously. Yeah.
Rick Bailey :
Nobody is going to invite me to go work at an ad agency out of the blue. So I did. I went back and told the president that I wasn’t going to stick around; that didn’t go over real well, but it was to be. We moved to South Bend, Indiana. I told Tammy we would only be there for two or three years at most. She said, “well, for two or three years, I can live in South Bend, Indiana, but not any more than that.” We were there for 30. I worked for Imprint from 83 to 91. That was a great experience in many ways. I learned a ton. They taught me the importance of customer care. I learned the practice of lassoing creativity to solve problems. I learned so much about the principles of marketing. I wasn’t a marketing major remember, but while I was working at Spring Arbor, I would audit marketing courses.
Zach Busekrus:
Oh, wow. Okay. And why?
Rick Bailey :
Just because, I was just fascinated. I was starting to do marketing things and I hadn’t taken a single business course in college. So I thought, ” well, I’d better learn something about marketing.” So I would audit marketing courses. That helped a lot. Now I was practicing and having to do that as a career. Doing it day in, day out, you learn a lot. I had some great mentors and teachers there.
Zach Busekrus:
I’m curious. During your time there, is there one or two things that you think stood out to you? Especially like, as you reflect on that season now, what were some learnings that you’ve carried with you to this day, from your time at Imprint?
Rick Bailey :
You know, all of us, have a crisis story. At least one. That’s one of mine. As great as that experience was and as much as I learned, the thing that stands out is how it imploded. The partners of the firm had a falling out. One partner left and the remaining partner behaved poorly. It led to the demise of the company and it happened in a dramatic and very difficult way. It was painful on all fronts. The lessons I learned, the big takeaways are probably as many things of what not to do as what to do. I learned a lot about customer experience and I learned a lot about marketing principles. I learned a lot about higher ed as an industry because I got saturated in it. My big takeaways are what not to do, how not to behave. That part of it is really ugly, but if it hadn’t been for that, we wouldn’t be here. We just celebrated our 30th anniversary of RHB. We wouldn’t be celebrating those 30 years if it hadn’t been for that. Out of ashes beauty. Right?
Zach Busekrus:
Help me understand timeline a little bit. Imprint unfortunately implodes. Do you have notice? Are you thinking, this is coming, time to jump ship, or did you sort of lose your job as the company collapsed?
Rick Bailey :
So I got a call from the corporate attorney. For the sake of this, I’m not going to give details.
Zach Busekrus:
I totally respect that.
Rick Bailey :
I got a call from the corporate attorney saying we need to talk. I was told by the corporate attorney that if I wanted to, I could take the helm of Imprint, but the partners were filing bankruptcy. I would need to manage the company out of bankruptcy.
Zach Busekrus:
Wow.
Rick Bailey :
All of us got that word on Monday, we had to make a decision by Wednesday and they closed the office on Friday. At the time there were 13 of us working there. So my job suddenly became to figure out how I could do the best to help the 12 other people who work there and figure out what they were going to do with their lives. How it was going to go forward. We figured out how to take care of our customers and the whole team worked for about 72 hours non-stop getting client property back in their hands so that it wouldn’t get locked up for ages. Back in those days you didn’t have digital photos, you had negatives or you had transparencies. We would hold volumes of these one of a kind images that our clients needed. We were shipping things back to them. We couldn’t tell them why. I was allowed on Friday morning to call all of my clients and tell them that I no longer worked at Imprint and that if they wanted to talk to me, they could call me at my home. I wasn’t allowed to tell them why I was leaving or what was up.
Zach Busekrus:
Wow.
Rick Bailey :
We were told by the attorneys that each of us could remove our personal effects from the building, but we had to make a list of everything we removed and tape it to our office walls. Then we could leave.
Zach Busekrus:
So, okay. That’s, dramatic and tragic in many ways. How do you go from there to RHB? Is it, is it an immediate jump? Is there something in between?
Rick Bailey :
Well, it wasn’t immediate. We had five days. It was a little more interesting than that. Tammy, my wife and business partner had been convinced for a long time that I should leave before any of this came to light. She said, “you really should have your own place.” I kept saying to her, “no, I really shouldn’t. You don’t know how much work that is.” It was a common point of conversation. She said, “I just feel like you need to strike out on your own.” We would talk about it and we noodle around with plans and imagine what it would be like if we did. We had little kids and I thought, we can’t do this with little kids. It just it wasn’t right. The timing wasn’t right.
I didn’t think I was up for it. But in the middle of all of that messy demise of Imprint, Tam said, “this is that moment you’ve been waiting for. ” I still said, no, I don’t think so. Word got out very rapidly. I got some great calls and offers from professional colleagues at other firms that invited me to join forces. At the time I didn’t trust a soul. I felt like the rug had been pulled out from underneath me. I didn’t know what end was up. I was surprised by how surprised I was, but it really shook me. I wasn’t eager to go work for somebody else, but I was scared to death to go to work for myself. So I asked Tam to be my business partner and that was going to be my big fleece. If she said no, then okay, I’m going to figure out which of those firms I’m going to go work for. If she says, yes, she’d be my business partner. We’d go for it or at least try. I said, “will you go 50/50 with me on this?” She said, “absolutely, let’s go.” We were done at Imprint at noon on Friday. We had a meeting with an attorney on Friday afternoon and filed incorporation papers that were signed by the governor on Monday, which was April 15th, tax day, 1991. And we didn’t know which end was up.
Zach Busekrus:
That is a fantastic story.
Rick Bailey :
We weren’t sure we were going to make it to April 16th, but on April 15th, we had a business. We asked three of the people that I worked with at Imprint that were now out of work, if they were interested in coming with us. We didn’t know how we would pay them. We didn’t know much of anything. The owners of Imprint told me that I could contact my clients. I had 13 clients at Imprint. They said I was welcome to nurture them. On Friday morning, I gave each of them a call. I said, “I can’t talk about this really, but I’m not going to work at Imprint after 12:00pm today. If you’d like to speak with me, I should be home around two o’clock. Here’s my home phone number.” By Monday morning, all 13 of them had called.
Zach Busekrus:
Wow.
Rick Bailey :
Of the 13, 12 of them said, “we’re on, just keep going. Work with us. We’re happy. ” We had 12 clients to start. The 13th client couldn’t come with us because their attorneys wouldn’t let them work with a company who had been in business less than a year.
Zach Busekrus:
So your 24 hours just wasn’t cutting it?
Rick Bailey :
Yeah. It wasn’t going to cut it. Of the 13, we had 12 clients. Interestingly, Zach, that 13th client—all the people that were there at the time are gone—but we just started working with the 13th client this year.
Zach Busekrus:
Oh, that’s remarkable. That’s a fantastic story. Full circle. I’m curious., I’ve got nine minutes left on my micro SD chip before it expires. So I’m going to challenge us to talk for these next eight minutes about a couple of final questions here. We could go on forever and we might need to do a part two to this anyways, Rick. Help me understand, why throughout the industry you are very, well-respected, very well-regarded. I think a lot of that has to do with your character. The genesis of the story that you just shared with me, which is really a true “beauty from the ashes” sort of story as you’ve so well-articulated. I’m curious, as you think about the legacy that RHB will leave if and when you decide to move on, what are some of the things that are most important to you?
Rick Bailey :
I’d answer that a few different ways. On one hand, I think about my children and grandchildren. I hope they have seen examples of fairness and the value of hard work. I hope they’ve seen me exhibit passion and compassion. A commitment to doing the right thing and doing the right thing very well. I hope they’ve seen in me an interest in caring about not only what you do, but how you live. So that’s probably the legacy I want to leave most. I’ve got two little granddaughters that are just awesome. I hope they see that in their Papa. They’re both going to go places. Probably be President and Vice President at some point. So not of RHB, but of the world.
Zach Busekrus:
Yeah. Okay. Thanks for clarifying.
Rick Bailey :
Secondly, I hope the legacy I leave has been some kind of influence on the people who have come to work at RHB. Tammy and I have been so blessed by the incredible people that have chosen to work here. They are remarkable. Their talents are just outstanding. Astounding. And I get excited every day getting to work with them. I hope they have felt loved. I hope they have felt appreciated and respected. I hope that they’re better people for the time they have spent at work. Third, is the mark I leave on the industry and the higher ed community. I hope they feel as a result of things I’ve said, written, taught–I hope they feel the courage to tell the truth. I hope that they feel challenged to be honest with themselves and with the people they serve. I hope they’ve been inspired to be their best selves and be the best version of themselves that they can possibly be. That would be an awesome thing to leave behind.
Zach Busekrus:
I think it would be. That is so well said, Rick and, very inspiring. I feel sort of just a sense of peace coupled with just motivation and inspiration , in what you just shared. Which is typically, at least in my experience, a sign of honesty. I appreciate that. My final question for you is, if you could go and start any other business, besides an agency that serves higher education, what would you do?
Rick Bailey :
Oh, Zack, your questions have been awesome. You go for the jugular. I’ve been harboring for a long time the interest that someday in my life, I would own this little seaside bar in Spain. I would serve Tempranillo in unlabeled bottles to my customers who came to chill. I imagine this stucco covered little cave like bar with about three customers. One who sits at the bar, one who sits in a corner and another who bravely sits at a little table. We would chat about things that might be important. If I’m going to have my next venture, it might be that. I have always wanted a restaurant, but that’s far too much work at this point in my life. So I think I might go for the little seaside bar. You’re welcome to come. Anytime.
Zach Busekrus:
I will be there. I will be there. We will record another podcast. By the time that that happens we’ll be talking about that venture and the trials and tribulations and learned in that business.
Rick Bailey :
Yeah. Awesome.
Zach Busekrus:
This has been such a privilege. I really appreciate you taking time to share even just a couple of highlights of your life and your story with me and with our listeners. This has been inspirational to say the least. This has been very engaging. I appreciate you. I appreciate your time. I appreciate the legacy that you have already built and lived. I look forward to continuing to learn from you and your work. Thanks for thanks for all you do.
Rick Bailey :
Thanks for the time to talk. Thanks.