From Zoos to Zillions: Terry Rich’s Wild Ride in Business

Terry Rich is a successful CEO and President of 25 years who loves to engage and
entertain audiences across the globe. Oh, and he led the team that busted the
largest lottery fraud in U.S. history, was a guest on Johnny Carson’s “Tonight
Show”, ran a zoo and gave away $1 Billion.

During his appointment by three Governors, his leadership increased lottery sales
and profits by 50%. He also led the Blank Park Zoo to profitability from a
$600,000 deficit while positioning it as the second largest attended attraction in the
state. But his national insight on business, banking, gaming, TV production,
marketing and PR led him to success in his professional career and to his passion
for public speaking.

Before that, he started four successful entrepreneurial businesses, and has
numerous national media appearances including ABC, NBC, HBO, CBS, 20/20,
CNN, CNBC, USA Today and The New York Times; and was a movie host on
Starz! His production of a Fox Sports show called “Socker Slam” is currently a
featured documentary on the Hearst streaming service “Very Local”.

He’s a disruptive innovator and entrepreneur with a drive for integrity and honesty.
He’s worked in the trenches, survived new business trends and had success with
generational changes. Terry’s keynotes are energetic, motivating and perfect for an
early morning, lunch or after dinner presentation.

Terry Rich has two books: The $80 Billion Gamble and Dare to Dream, Dare to
Act, available on Amazon, Kindle and Audible.

Thank you for listening! We hope you feel inspired and encouraged by our conversation today. If you did, be sure to share this episode with others.

Let’s stay in touch:

• Follow us on Instagram @crossroadsapologetics
• Email us at info@crossroadsapologetics.org
• Visit our website www.crossroadsapologetics.org

See you in the next episode! Be blessed!

Full Transcript

Jeff Johnson:
Terry, thank you so much for joining the Courageous podcast today. I really appreciate you being on the program, and so looking forward to talking to you. I’ve never talked to anybody before that’s been on the Johnny Carson show, that’s given away a billion dollars, that’s ran a zoo, that’s. I mean, your pedigree is amazing. You’ve got a lot of different things. So, anyway, thanks for joining. 

Terry Rich:
One of two things. Either I can’t hold a job, or the truth is I. I get bored, you know, every seven to 10 years. You know, I like trying something new, and it’s been a really fun life, and it’s fun helping other people. So I’m glad to be here. 

Jeff Johnson:
What an amazing career. Yeah. Could you tell us a little bit about your past, about your family, who you are, just to put yourself in context for our listeners? 

Terry Rich:
Sure. Well, I grew up in Jefferson, Iowa, Cooper, actually a little town south of Jefferson. And. And grew up on a farm. And you learned a lot about entrepreneurship because you got to just be able to do your thing and to be able to change and adapt all environments. So I went to Iowa State thinking I was going to be a math major, quite honestly. And I. I learned quickly that was fun and intriguing and challenging, but boring. And a guy said, you can go over here and talk and make a living. So I got in TV and radio, and I got the luckiest break right out of college by raising my hand to volunteer. And I tell people when they first start, if you do anything, you go into a company, raise your hand and volunteer. 

Terry Rich:
Because when you raise your hand and volunteer, you get noticed. Bathroom’s dirty. We don’t have a janitor. I’ll. I’ll help. And. And I raised my hand, and I got hired by a guy named Jim county and Bill Riley to start in the cable television business rather than a broadcast, which is where I thought I’d end up. And lo and behold, I learned about entrepreneurship. I got these things called stock options. Had no idea what they were, and this company was sold, encouraging to fail, to try new things and to do things that no one’s ever done in cable television with people like Ted Turner. And lo and behold, we just went right through the roof. And at age 40, I had made all of the financial goals I had in my life. 

Terry Rich:
And I thought, wow, when they decided to cash it out and sell the company, I’m just going to retire, and you can’t do that. The excitement of the entrepreneurship took me to starting my own companies, and I started Doing free HBO previews and worked with ESPN and all these national TV things and probably made more money than I did in the cable business. But then at age 50, midlife crisis. I said, I got to get off the road. I want to be with my family. I was just traveling all over making great money, but I got a call and said, hey, would you help us with the zoo? They’re going to close down the zoo. We’re going to take it over. Bob Ray, ex governor, called and so we took over the zoo and it was losing $600,000 a year. We cash flowed. 

Terry Rich:
It’s pretty easy to cash flow and raised $15 million and it’s going to be around forever as the second largest cultural attraction in the world. And back to the boredom. I decided it’s time to maybe retire again. I got a call from a governor, said, hey, the lottery director is returned. You want to run the lottery? Well, you can tell I like to do something quick, fast, and I love promotion, I love being on tv. And in general, all of a sudden I had to become serious because we had an internal fraud and ultimately took us almost six years to crack the largest lottery fraud in US history. And that was a whole different experience. But that’s part of the learning and the growth that you have as you grow up. 

Terry Rich:
You know, you realize the older you get, the less you know, and it’s fun to learn new things. So I finally retired and now I just travel the world talking about internal fraud and talking to banks and all sorts of different organizations about how to watch for internal fraud using that lottery story. So it’s really been a fun life and fun retirement and how we do that. Family’s great. Most people don’t get when you retire that all the kids are still around and all the grandkids are still around. So we see everybody every week. So it’s a pretty good life. 

Jeff Johnson:
Wow, Terry. Well, you’re sought after speaker and for good reason. 

Terry Rich:
Because I have a BS in speech from Iowa State. That’s my degree, Bachelor of Science and speech. 

Jeff Johnson:
An amazing pedigree. You know, I’m reminded of the, and I can’t quote it, doggone it, I should be able to. But the Teddy Roosevelt I remember, he was asked one because he had such an amazing life with so many experiences. They said, how did that happen? And he said, I saw things happening and I put myself in the way of that and things happened. I mean, it sounds a little bit like the same kind of thing. Terry, you’ve just been in the right place at the right time, over and over again. 

Terry Rich:
But, you know, when I go out and speak, when I see a millennial or something like that, I really. It opens your eyes because when I ask for questions, one raised their hand, said, you know, I know you’ve been successful. Haven’t you ever screwed up? Haven’t you ever failed? Oh, my God, yes. I mean, people who I know in the. And the executives that you associate yourself with, when you hear their stories, everybody has had major failures, but they learn by those failures. It’s better to have tried and failed than to succeed at doing nothing. That’s how you’re pushing the envelope. 

Terry Rich:
And failure is really the first step to success because that’s how you learn and you true, truly accomplish things no one else has ever done because you’ve got to fail once or twice to make that and have the drive and desire to be able to do it. 

Jeff Johnson:
Amen. Amen. Wonderful. Well, our, the point of our podcast here is to come down to that main question. What’s the most courageous thing that you’ve done? And I’m going to ask you that in a minute. But before we get there, I’m curious about calibrating your understanding about courage. So let me ask you a couple questions. How do you think courage differs from recklessness? 

Terry Rich:
Applied risk? I think when you are starting out, if you want to start a new business right out of college, you have no experience, but you know that you want to do X, Y, Z, you want to invent the new mousetrap, you have all of the desire in the world to do it, but you haven’t looked at the applied risks of, do I spend all of my money to do this? Is it going to work? I think the older you get the courage, you find that the courage comes from taking the step, actually doing something, but calculating the risks involved in that to maximize and to make sure that if something does fail, you can adjust and come back and make it successful. 

Jeff Johnson:
So it’s applied risk. It’s not complete recklessness, it’s applied risk. Understanding what the downside potentially could be. That’s great. 

Terry Rich:
And I think as I got older, as I started doing companies, instead of thinking I want to do something and spend, you know, in my entire bankroll to create a new idea, I found that I did personally, my own r d take 10 of anything I made. When I had big success, I took part of it. And I use that as play money. When I say play money, you could either go gamble it you could go drink it, you could do a lot of things. But I used it to find that next new thing that I really want to do, but it probably won’t work. But when I, if I lost it, I still had 90% of my money. And I think that’s kind of the applied risk concept. 

Jeff Johnson:
Yeah. Wonderful. What does courage mean to you? 

Terry Rich:
I think courage is daring to dream, is. Is fun. Everybody has a million dollar idea. Courage is daring to actually taking that step. You know, when they went to the moon, three guys went to the moon. They failed over 90% of the time, but they had the courage of the people to continue to course correct and do all the right things. Do. Do all the right things. And I think the courage to take the step to say we can get to the moon when no one else has ever done it is the right way. And surrounding yourself with the right people to make it successful. 

Jeff Johnson:
Do you think everybody has the opportunity to be courageous? Do you think everybody has? 

Terry Rich:
Oh, my God, yes. When I got to know Ted Turner, you know, the guy came in and spoke at one of our chamber events, and I was riding with him and he said, oh, my God, he said, I just talked to my accountant. He said I was worth a half a billion dollars. Oh, gosh, great. He’s. 

Jeff Johnson:
Yeah. 

Terry Rich:
But I’m still seeing two psychotherapists every week now that, geez, if this guy can be that successful, why can’t I? And. And as you’re watching this, if we can be, you and I can be this successful and success is all in your mind. Right. Every day I go to work and Eric hear people or I talk to people that have a better car. You know, you buy a big boat and you think you have everything. You go to the slip and you’re going to see two or three bigger boats. Everybody has. So much happiness happens on the way to success. If you think when I make my goal, I’m successful, and I was courageous in doing that, it’s what you do every day. If you’re not happy today, you sure as heck’s not going to be happy. 

Terry Rich:
When you make, when you know, turn 62, get your Social Security, and everybody thinks that’s the end and you’re happy. 

Jeff Johnson:
Yeah. Wow. Okay, so you mentioned Ted Turner, but I’m curious. Other contemporary people or people that you’ve known that are particularly inspire you with courage. 

Terry Rich:
I think that it’s kind of like your first love. Your first boss is always good. And the guy named Jim county, who was pretty Notorious around our area and continues to continue to invest within the community, was probably one because I managed like him, because I learned from him. And again, it’s like your first love. You really, when you’re in your first company, that’s usually your favorite thing that you remember those kinds of things that you succeeded with something. So I think that is, of course, my dad. He was always encouraging people. People ask, you know, how do you get crazy? How do you get creative? And I realized, looking back that my dad, my uncle, could tell a story better than anybody. And I learned my storytelling from him because he was always telling funny stories. 

Terry Rich:
But my dad, when I would do something, he’d look at me and kind of go, you know, I want to. I want to. I don’t want to go down and feed the calf in the barn because it’s too cold. I want to call my uncle short and get. Get a tube down to them and I’ll just pour it here at the house. Look at me and laugh, say, well, why don’t you call him and try it? You know, he was encouraging, even though he knew it kind of would fail. That was the encouragement you need. I tried to do that in all of my management skills, to never, ever say, you know, here’s my VP or here’s my, you know, accounting person. Here’s our team. Here’s our accounting person. It’s. We are together as a team. 

Terry Rich:
Because that encouragement seemed to give and help me with more success than worrying specifically, you know, it’s using the I I word. 

Jeff Johnson:
Yeah. I feel like courage is interject in my own personal opinion here, but I feel like courage is so attractive. Like, you can catch that on people. People walk into a room and they just kind of have this glow about that. You know how there’s some people that are eeyores, you know, they’re kind of bucket dippers. You know, it kind of just wears you out a little bit. But you get around courageous people and you feel lifted up and called to it as well. 

Terry Rich:
You. You. You hit a. You hit a good point there. And I think the word encourage, I would transform that to confidence. When I first started the lottery, you know, I. $350 million. Who’d want to, you know, walk in? My God, I was wearing on the zoo for 3 million, this 350 million. And you’d get out of the car and you’d walk toward the door and think, oh, my God, you know, I’m in charge of this. I could be fired today. All I got to say is one Wrong word. It’s a political appointment, all blah, blah. But when I opened the door, the thing I learned from the leaders that I surrounded myself with was you show confidence and your people. Often, if you aren’t confident when you walk in the door, I think it’s confidence. 

Terry Rich:
This is important as the courage to walk in the door and believe in a project and believe in a person, say, here’s a crazy idea. What do you think? I think this might work. The people around you, if they see you are confident, they become confident, and they’ll pull off things that you probably thought, I don’t know whether this is going to work or not, but I don’t know any CEO that doesn’t have their own trepidations on things when they walk in. But when they walk into a boardroom or a room to do it, you’ll see them very confident and very courageous to take it. The next step. Yeah, look them in the eye, man. 

Terry Rich:
I can’t tell you how many people, if somebody doesn’t look you in the eye when you walk in and talk to them, and even that smile of confidence gives you the courage to continue. The other thing is, I’m. I’m a little superstitious. Even though I ran the lottery. I mean, and the reason I am is because my very first big project, when I came out of the cable company and started my own company, I got a huge contract within seven days out of the blue, because I flew to a place to make a pitch, and I. And I was early. So I got a. A hash brown, medium Diet Coke and a cinnamon roll. And after I did that, I got this big contract. I thought next time I went back out or I went to another pitch, guess what I had? 

Terry Rich:
Hash brown cinnamon roll and a medium Diet Coke. And it wasn’t so much that made me lucky. It was that it gave me confidence. It put in my mind, and often people wear a certain coat or I wear something special when I go on TV if I know I’m going to have a big appearance, because it gives me the confidence that I’ve had success before to take ahead and have the courage to take the next step. 

Jeff Johnson:
Oh, it’s wonderful. What a. What a work history. What a background. Great insight, Terry. 

Terry Rich:
But back to your point, if I can do it as an old farm kid, I mean, I. We had, were. We were poor. I didn’t realize it because were happy. You know, our family was a fun family. And it. You just got to take that step. And if I can do it. Anyone can do it. Guaranteed. 

Jeff Johnson:
Yeah. So to that point, Terry, let me ask you the question. What’s the most courageous thing you’ve ever done? 

Terry Rich:
Once I really got into TV and I love promoting and doing PR and selling and marketing and building companies, everything came to a screeching halt when I was at the lottery and we realized we might have an internal fraud. And the reason was, is because were in a small state, I was in charge of that state, but were part of a big associ. And all of the people who are counterparts to me in each state appointed our political appointees. And they were afraid that if were wrong in prosecuting this particular fraud and people thought that all lotteries were rigged, that were gambling with an $80 billion company, and that $80 billion is more money than all the money spent on sports tickets, movies, music combined. 

Terry Rich:
And so every time we made the decision to get on TV and say, we’re going to prosecute and we’re going to find this out, we want the game fair and honest, I got a lot of calls say, why don’t you just shut your mouth, just pay it and get go, you know, go let it go away, because you’re going to hurt our business that we use to raise money for our state. And our state needs the money. Our governor’s on my back and the courage to be able to continue. That actually cost me good friends, probably cost me a lot of promotions and I could have, you know, been president of the World Lottery Association. Lots of things that were working up as we’re in this organization. But, you know, I made the decision and I asked my team to make the decision. 

Terry Rich:
Don’t we really want to do something that morally is correct? And that countered the idea that if we screwed up on this deal, we could cost an industry of $80 billion and friends and neighbors. The other support that came in that when we decided we’re going after it and I’m going to have to get. Spend 6, $700,000 to pay for the attorney general’s travel and the process and the dci. So the people who are investigating travel was going to a governor, and because we live in Iowa, the governor said, spend whatever you want to because I said, I want the games fair and honest. I want the games fair and honest. And my God, what a great. If we would have done that at a neighboring state, I won’t. That I won’t say starts with an I. 

Terry Rich:
There’s no way that they wouldn’t have said, just pay it and keep it low and don’t let anybody know because we need the money because they had all these deficits. So I didn’t want money to, to block what the right thing to do was. And I, I think that’s probably courageous. Was it the right step? Did we do the right thing? It was the right gamble because we busted it. Put. Actually sales increased because everybody thought, well, they’re watching the lottery. I’m not going to play the Malta online poker anymore, because who knows who’s running that deal. They knew they could talk to us if they thought something was wrong. And that was probably the hardest. I, I wouldn’t want to do it again. I wouldn’t want anybody else to do it again. 

Terry Rich:
And that’s why I go across the world, tell the story of have the right checks and balances and the right policies in place to avoid going through what went through. So I’m glad I did it. I can sleep at night. Others who told us just to pay it in that, they probably worried that I would use names with it. But no, the idea was do the right thing. 

Jeff Johnson:
I’d say that’s an amazing story of courage, Terry, and a story of courage that comes with a lot of zeros after it. Wow. What was it in that moment inside of you that said. Because there must have been a demarcation point where it’s like, okay, I can cave or I can just stay the course. What was that thing inside of you that. That said, no, we’ve got to keep moving forward. 

Terry Rich:
Probably just. Just the feeling of this isn’t right and if we mess it up, we’re going to be fired. So let’s make sure we try to do the right thing. And it’s back to you try to do what you learned. And I think growing up on the farm, growing up in the state, there’s a lot of ethics, I think more that we had within our area church, all the things that go along with it than you have. I don’t know. You know, we could have gone the other way. Probably been a lot easier. I had a lot more fun in the things that were doing. It was a real mind twister when it was all said and done. But I just, I think back to. I learned about doing the right thing and moving forward so that you can sleep at night. 

Terry Rich:
And if somebody, you know, your kids ask you know, how’d you do? I mean, I’ve screwed up a lot of life, too. I mean, the things Decisions we all make growing up, it just was a time and place that felt like the right thing to do. 

Jeff Johnson:
The right morals and the right ethics kind of go hand in hand with courage, I think. I think I see that a lot around me. You know, it takes a lot of. A lot of courage to do the right thing in the face of just as it, you know, so much other pressure and people wanting to push you the other way. 

Terry Rich:
Yeah, yeah, you ask that. That really is a hard question. And I guess looking back on it, I feel good that I made the decisions without trying to analyze it too much, you know, because you can justify a lot of things in your life of what you want to do because it feels good. Should do. This would benefit me more. Whatever. 

Jeff Johnson:
Wonderful. Well, there’s. Excuse me, there’s somebody out there that’s on the precipice of making a big decision. They’ve got something pressing down and they’ve got to go left or they’ve got to go right or they’re wringing their hands. Maybe it’s costing them a little bit of sleep at night. Speak to that person if you would. But Terry, just as we close here and encourage them on making the right decision and being courageous and stepping out. 

Terry Rich:
Every one of us. I know everyone has a million dollar idea out there and at what point do you pull the trigger? And it was my professor at Iowa State who said it’s better to have tried and failed than to succeed at doing nothing. And you feel like government workers, that’s probably what their stereotype is, although I know they aren’t that way. It’s better to have tried and failed than succeeded doing nothing. Take that first step, know that people have failed before and have a plan B. Always looking for plan B’s. Surround yourself with people who can augment what you don’t know that you might stumble upon. To give you advice on that with either an advisory board or a paid board, if you’ve got the funds. But say, heck with it, I’m going for it. 

Terry Rich:
But utilize a portion of your assets, not your entire assets, so that if it does not work, it is the same as you’re going to do a casino to gamble. You go out and you take $100 and you call it entertainment, call this education. To take a portion of your money, invest it in and go for it. It is so rewarding when it works. So rewarding when it works. So rewarding when it works. 

Jeff Johnson:
Terry Rich, thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate it. I’m grateful to call you a friend. And I got a lot to learn from you with all your courageous activities. Thank you. 

Terry Rich:
Well, we have a lot to learn from each other. That’s what friendship’s all about. And that’s. That’s what growth is all about. Even at my age, I love learning new things. And you can see that by all the different things that we’ve tried to do, that’s rewarding in life. Thank you for asking me on.