The Success Nuggets

Success Nuggets #47 Joe and Julie Foster - Never Give Up, Have Fun

• David Abel • Season 3 • Episode 6

Share episode

What do chainsaws, last-minute speaking gigs, and a billion-dollar brand have in common?

Joe & Julie Foster.

This week on The Success Nuggets, we go beyond the Reebok story to explore how business and love can fuel each other—when respect, humor, and partnership are at the core.

It’s one of only two times they’ve ever done a podcast together. Trust me,you’ll want to hear this.

Speaker 2:

Thank you about the patterns that drive progress. Get ready to dive into a world of insights and inspiration. This is the Success Nuggets podcast, with the founder of the Digital Lightbulb and your host, david Abel.

Speaker 3:

Welcome back to the Success Nuggets podcast. Today we're joined by a legend in the world of sports and business, Joe Foster, the founder of Reebok. Alongside his wife and partner, Julie Foster, Joe took Reebok from a small family business to a global sportswear empire, revolutionising the industry. Along the way, His vision, persistence and ability to spot the next big opportunity, which he calls white space, made Reebok a household name. If you'd like to hear more about Joe's story after this, rewind to episode 17 of the Success Nuggets to hear more. But behind every great journey is the personal side navigating success, relationships and the ever-changing world we live in. Julie's been by Joe's side, helping shape the next chapters of their story. So today we're going to dive in about building an empire, making bold decisions and what it really takes to balance business and life as a couple. Let's get into it.

Speaker 1:

Hello julie, hello joe hey david, hi david, how are you?

Speaker 3:

very well. Thank you for coming in when we talk about your incredible business journeys. Joe, you built a global giant and julie, you've been a key part of the journey as life on the road. How would you describe your partnership in life and work?

Speaker 1:

hello, we've been together a long time. We've been together um 33 years, 34 years, so we, we kind of know each other quite well.

Speaker 4:

Now, just about yeah, we know each other. We've known each other a long, a long time.

Speaker 3:

That's why we're still together yeah yeah, joe, you've got a great take on work-life balance. I want to ask you the other week how do you manage work-life balance? And you just said it's are you having fun or not?

Speaker 4:

it is having fun. But work-life balance, I think when, uh, I'm not really good at this because my first attempt with being married really failed on the on the balance, mainly because if you're running a business and something happens, you've really got to get to it and mend it, you're really going to do something about it. You can't say, well, it'll be all right, we'll do it next week. No, you've got to do it immediately. And for that to happen and and for everything to work well, your partner, whoever it is, has to be with you. Yeah, come on, we'll do it. There's got to be a we in there. Yes, we'll do it. Or look, I can't do it this morning, I'll look after this if you want to get it.

Speaker 4:

It's that cooperation that needs to be there, which I don't, or my first wife, but we were not good at that, we didn't do that very good. A genius who called used to say why don't you go and get a proper job? Things like that, all sorts of have you working together? But with Julie we met because we were working together.

Speaker 1:

I haven't had a proper job since. I haven't had a proper job for 33 years.

Speaker 4:

That's wonderful. I'm a good job at no job.

Speaker 1:

I do a quite good job at having no job.

Speaker 3:

I think that's the secret, though, isn't it? You can feel like you're skiving off at first. Is this really my job?

Speaker 1:

I've had many, many different roles within various organizations of yours, haven't I? I? Have done everything from being a fitness instructor to assisting running joel's brother with a pub, to helping with a garden plant nursery, to plant maintenance um, you name it. I'm a dab hand with a chainsaw. Yeah, you know, I've, I've done. Now my latest is a drill. Oh, my latest job is now. I am chief in charge of the drill.

Speaker 4:

Yes.

Speaker 1:

The last two weeks I'm now, you know I've had my basic instruction on how to use it.

Speaker 4:

Basic training.

Speaker 1:

Basic training on the drill. Somebody can't drill anymore, so that's now my job.

Speaker 4:

Yeah well, it's difficult these days.

Speaker 3:

Julie, that's so interesting how you managed to do all those different jobs. Was it like Joe was putting you on those jobs, or how did they come about for you?

Speaker 1:

Generally because somebody else ducked out, I was left holding the baby, as it were. It's like oh, these people have quit. Oh, julie, you can be a fitness instructor, there you go. That was interesting, that, julie, you can be a fitness instructor. There you go.

Speaker 4:

That was interesting. That was interesting, yeah.

Speaker 1:

So that's yeah. So generally I just kind of pick up. I've sort of picked up through the. When everything's falling down holes, I'm the one who goes and plugs the hole.

Speaker 4:

That was the secret. The second time I got somebody who would do that, yeah, that's not like you planned this.

Speaker 3:

You've traveled all over the world. Your year feed can vary from australia one month, the far east and the usa as well. I've seen you often with film stars on stage. What keeps you on the road so much?

Speaker 4:

Doing that. Speaking Well, speaking keeps us on the road, but we do enjoy meeting people. I mean, during my first life with Reebok, I met an awful lot of A-listers because we used to have a tennis tournament it was a pro-am tennis tournament in Monte Carlo. Well, not even the A-listers turned down the trip to Monte Carlo. That was pretty good. So, yeah, meeting these people, it's surprising how natural and normal they are. When you meet them, there's one or two who are a bit grumpy I would say 98%. They're brilliant and they're just interested as well. Oh we're, oh we're with every buck, or whatever it was. I made a few good friends as well. Unfortunately, they were all either my age or a bit older, so they've either gone or they're useless now.

Speaker 3:

How far in advance do you have to plan these trips?

Speaker 1:

Um, it depends.

Speaker 1:

Every single event that we ever do is different, because people ask me about experiences of well, how do you organize this and how do you, how do you work with, with different organizations, with the speaking, and literally every single one is different. It's all done on a like a case by case basis, though I think the the fastest we had was the EO organization in Florida, and we woke up on a Saturday morning and we're actually in a travel lodge on a motorway services on the M40, on our way back from being down south somewhere. I woke up to an email that said we're really sorry, but we have got like 500 people waiting for you to speak to them on Tuesday, but we forgot to tell you okay. So literally we drove the rest of the way back to Manchester and Sunday morning we were in the airport at 8am and went off to Florida for a week. So you know we can turn things around pretty quickly.

Speaker 1:

The next event is Bangkok, and we've known about that one for now about three and a half weeks, four weeks, something like that. So sometimes we can get a month's notice, sometimes even more, sometimes three months, but sometimes we get 24 hours.

Speaker 4:

The danger if it's three months in advance. Yes, those are the ones that collapse. Yes, they are, you're going along, you're going along. Then somebody says, oh, something happens.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 4:

There's too far ahead, so something happens along that timeline, and when that happens and that's happened to us now twice with Sri Lanka, and and then then everything, because you try and make contacts we'll go to Sri Lanka and from Sri Lanka we'll go to Bangkok, which made sense.

Speaker 1:

it's only three hours from Sri Lanka to Bangkok yeah, it's like 10 hours, 10 and a half hours down to Sri Lanka, but from from here and it's also it's like 14, but for us it's two sevens and a three-day break in between. So logistics is the bane of my life. Really A very tricky thing trying to keep the schedule moving, keep it together. It's quite tricky at times.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, we have done some fairly quick turnarounds and fairly stupid ones. We went from Panama to Saudi Arabia.

Speaker 1:

Yes, and that was just after COVID, wasn't it?

Speaker 2:

It was.

Speaker 1:

We'd had a really bad experience, just after COVID, with luggage. So this trip we literally did a one-month trip with one cabin trolley each and one small holdall each.

Speaker 3:

I think there'll be many operations directors there feeling there's someone in the same boat as them, julie. Operations directors there feeling there's someone in the same boat as them. Julie, despite your successes for many, many years, you've never lost your community spirit. You're always making time for others. You've created a book community called survive and thrive, but it goes far beyond that. There's thousands of people who, I think, would appreciate your time. Why is that so important to you?

Speaker 4:

well, it keeps us going. Building that community is all about having people around you, and I couldn't think of anything worse. Julie's father he had a bad hip and he wouldn't get his into. And his friends around here, they all. They passed away one by one. They went and he, he had to sit here and he didn't seem to worry him. He had television or he read books. But I wouldn't like that. I would like to sort of just been looking out the window and that's. You know, that's my future. Eventually he did get going but his doctor said get that hip done. And he believed his doctor. He wouldn't believe it was howdy he wouldn. He wouldn't listen to him Because he'd had a bypass. He'd had a bypass. He thought that the chances of him surviving going through having the hip done would be sort of small. And my opinion was look, you're not having a life now. You won't know if you die under anesthetic, you won't know.

Speaker 1:

You're going to say do something. No, I couldn't sit and do nothing, we just like being busy. We always like being busy. We always like doing something, even if we're at home. I mean, you can't see it from here, but this, this is the laptop is on top of a thousand piece jigsaw, that is 70 done, and on the other side of the room is my art.

Speaker 3:

So I you know, because we're in a bit of a lull before we travel in between various zooms that we have to do, we we never just sit there staring at the walls, that's it and with that commitment to community and having people around you and that was a really beautiful way to describe it as well how was meeting so many different people shaped your perspective on life and business?

Speaker 4:

well, I think it's amazing what you learn from people and you do, you do. Every day is a is a school day, when you talk to people about what they've done and the amazing thing is, especially with this book, survive and thrive the stories, I mean. Or when they're telling the story and think, my god, I thought I'd done a lot without I've been around, but some of these of these people, yeah they're amazing stories, yeah, absolutely amazing. You know, speaking five or six languages, leaving sort of war-torn countries.

Speaker 1:

It's just amazing, yeah it's amazing to meet such a diverse group of people as well. You know, sometimes you, if you like, just do the speaking events. You're just going to meet the same sort of thread of people, but doing the book series, it really expands the, the, the sort of network, into so many different types of people, so many different countries, so many different areas. It's so, it's a mate, it's really. We're really loving meeting the diversity of types of people, you know. So, expanding the network, rather than just in a particular narrow field, maybe startups, or maybe just entrepreneurs we're spreading our reach to so many different areas of life, which is really exciting.

Speaker 4:

It really is. Yes, from astronauts to people being killed, it is amazing. And, of course, one of the things about traveling is we have been to Kyrgyzstan, which we probably had never heard of before. There's a lot of stands out there, but to get to Kyrgyzstan and that was really interesting.

Speaker 3:

Do you know how many countries you've been to?

Speaker 1:

No, I think I keep meaning to do that, but we've not quite got there yet.

Speaker 4:

No, I don't think we've been. We're not these people who just want to go to different countries. We just happen to go to different countries because of speaking. We wouldn't go to a lot of countries unless we were invited, because we do like Europe, we do like France and we love the people we met in America. So there's lots of things and of course, we get down to London and meet you.

Speaker 3:

I don't want to talk about ages, but, julie, being younger than Mr Joe Foster, you know the world slightly differently, but what's one lesson Joe's mindset has taught you?

Speaker 1:

just never, just never give up, never, ever give up. Just because we've had, you know, we've had some things that have happened, you think, oh, should we just do it? Why are we even bothering? Like like these, we've had three events collapse on us in the last three years. It's like, well, why are we bothering doing this? And then you think, no, we're not giving up, never give up, we don't give up.

Speaker 3:

We're not giving up people, are we no? And the fact that mexico nearly killed him in fact, that mays nearly killed me.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, we just never give up, we'll keep going. Yeah, and jira, if you could swap one mindset or habit with julie, what do you think it might be well, she has an amazing talent to speak to anybody, whoever they are, wherever they are. I remember sitting in between two lords when we met with Nigel Farage, and she would chat to them both. It's as simple as that, whereas I guess, being brought up inside of the 30s 40s, I had that bit more reserved. Yes, right now I probably speak to most people, but if I can get a word in edge of it, because June is always the first who?

Speaker 1:

me, who me?

Speaker 3:

Guys, you are a wonderful couple. You are wonderful community leaders and humans as well. It's a One Golden Nugget show, so we'd be right to finish with what is your One Golden Nugget. I don't know if you have one prepared or not, I'm just going to throw the floor open. Joe Foster and Judy Foster what is your One Golden Nugget, or what is your combined one golden nugget?

Speaker 4:

It could be my name, but just keep going, never give up and have fun. And if you're not having fun, change it. Go somewhere, do something else.

Speaker 1:

And mine is learn to listen, not hear.

Speaker 3:

Thank you for your wisdom and energy. Thank you for your time as well. If you love this episode, share it with someone who needs to hear it. There's so much advice. There's so many nuggets. Listen to it again and again and again. Thank you for coming in. It's great to see you. Oh it's a pleasure, indeed a pleasure, thank you join david and his incredible guests next time on the success nuggets podcast and to and to find out more, visit OneGoldenNuggetcom.

Speaker 2:

Thank you for listening.