Sue Wilhite 00:00

This is the Sweet Sound of Success with Sue Wilhite, Profit Attraction Master. Susan Brender is the host of the Susan Brender Show. She started out as a creative multimedia and television producer and communications professional. Her diversified experience includes producing political, entertainment and business programs. As a TV producer, she has worked for CNBC, MSNBC, and WIS; The Wall Street Journal report, with many well-known entertainers, such as Charles Grodin, Phil Donahue, and many others. Susan was a Programming and Communications Consultant for many organizations nationwide, developing innovative educational, arts and wellness programs for youth and adults. 

Welcome Susan Brender, I am so thrilled that you're going to be on my show.

Susan Brender 01:05

Thank you, Sue. I really appreciate you inviting me to the show.

Sue Wilhite 01:10

Well, you're a media star from many years and I'm just a rank newbie. So, it's just really an incredible honor that you're here with me. So, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Susan Brender 01:27

Well, Sue, I just have to tell you, some people would say that actually I've been doing this show for so long and actually, I started podcasting, which I want to tell you about. But I really appreciate the fact that you're thinking that I'm a star. I actually think you're a star, because you've done so much with your life. But anyway, I'm here to be interviewed and I look forward to what you have to ask me.

Sue Wilhite 01:57

Well, absolutely. So, the format of the show is the hero's journey for the entrepreneur’s soul and so what I love to do when I'm interviewing people, is to put their lives and their entrepreneurial journey into that structure. So, let's start with what Joseph Campbell calls the ordinary beginning. Where were you? What were you doing at the very beginning?

Susan Brender 02:33

Well, actually, I was involved in a number of things beginning, believe it or not, working with people who were Japanese and what I was doing is I was actually teaching them how to be citizens, if you will, how to speak English and it was the most amazing, absolutely amazing experience. When you're a teacher with the Japanese, they call you Sensei and when you're a Sensei, you're like, the most important person in their lives. It was a great time in my life and I really enjoyed working with them. But now, what happened was, fortunately, and I say, fortunately, I happen to have the neighbor who worked for CNBC, and the neighbor said to me, how would you like to work for Phil Donahue? What do you think I said?

Sue Wilhite 03:33

Now that is a call to action.

Susan Brender 03:35

There you go. I started with CMBC working for Phil and it was an amazing experience. Phil is a great guy and my chores, if you will, as a producer was to really get him fabulous people for his show and it was an amazing experience. But I want to jump forward because actually, working with Phil, was just the beginning. The next job that I had was working with Grodin and Grodin was my hero and the reason he was my hero is he wanted me to do amazing stories and I can tell you one story that he asked me to do, which I thought was an amazing story and then a very, very exciting one as well and that was the story of the Karla Faye Tucker execution, and I say execution, because she was absolutely one of the most interesting people in prison on death row and I was asked to go meet her. When I did, the prison, which was in Texas, said to me, she doesn't want to do it. Now, interestingly enough, Sue, I was very persistent. I wouldn't stop. I brought a video team with me, and I said, I want Karla to do the show and I was pushing them and pushing them and suddenly, they came back out and they said to me, okay, she's going to do it. Now, I walked into the prison and there was this young, beautiful woman who was convicted of killing two people in a horrendous act. She hacked them to death and what was most fascinating was that she looked up at me, she said put your hands on the window and I did and she said, Susan, I want to tell you, I did do that crime. It was a horrendous crime. But I know, and I've been here on death row for 11 years and I could do better with people in the prison. I can teach them how to be good people. I'm not asking you to let me out of prison. All I'm saying is just let me stay alive.

Sue Wilhite 06:09

Wow, wow. That must have given you chills.

Susan Brender 06:14

It did. It kind of gave me the idea that is the right to die or the reason to die, is that something that we should be really thinking about? Because look, the family of the person who was killed, they said, oh, my God, she's got to die. But was most amazing, because there was a feeling that I got, after seeing her and understanding that she probably could have done better with people in prison and stay alive. But low and behold, George Bush Jr. was the prosecutor in Texas and unfortunately, his attitude was no, she committed this crime, she has to die. So, I watched when she was killed, and it was the most painful thing that I ever felt. Now, the question becomes and I'm going to ask you, Sue, if somebody said to you, I can do better in the prison than being killed, how would you feel? 

Sue Wilhite 07:37

Oh, that would be heartbreaking, it would motivate me to go on a campaign and figure out how to prevent her execution.

Susan Brender 07:49

Correct. Well, she did die and, interestingly enough, Sue, I was with a woman who actually wrote a book about her and her son was killed and she decided to find out who were these people that were on death row. She wanted to think about the death penalty. She wanted to kind of make herself feel better because if she met them, maybe she would learn what was behind all of that and she and I stood outside waiting to hear what the governor said when they killed her and she looked at me and she said, you know Susan, my son died. My son was killed. It was horrendous. It put me into a major depression. But the reality is that Karla Faye didn't deserve to die.

Sue Wilhite 08:56

That's forgiveness, right?

Susan Brender 08:59

Yeah. Then after that when you work in television, every time a show gets off, or is told that it's finished, you have to look for another job. Well, low and behold, I'll tell you this, and I think you're going to find this quite interesting. I got a call one day as producer for Charles Grodin and the woman who called me said, I'm Kim from LA, would you like to have a very interesting person on your show? I said, why not? Why wouldn't I?

Sue Wilhite 09:37

That's your job.

Susan Brender 09:38

Guess who she asked me to have on the show, Sue?

Sue Wilhite 09:44

George Bush?

Susan Brender 09:46

Well, that would have been interesting, but it was Larry Flynt and interestingly enough, that was the time that my show was actually put on hold. So, I had all the time in the world to take him around New York City and I took them to the Larry King Show, I took him to the Geraldo Rivera show, and all these shows in New York. He thought, for some reason that I would know everything about politics, which was such a joke for me, because I didn't. But he said to me, Susan, I would like to talk politics. So, I said, you know what, Larry, put your money where your mouth is, let's do a show. Let's do something called a podcast and, interestingly enough, Sue, this is like about 15 years ago. So, to tell you the truth, nobody ever heard of a podcast. I kind of faded up. I call myself the person who invented the podcast.

Sue Wilhite 10:59

How cool was that? 

Susan Brender 11:01

We did it. There were people like Ariana Huffington that was on the show, Bill Maher, who was on the show, and a variety of other people and if I knew then what I know now, you could be sure that I would do the show, it was called the First Amendment and that is very important, Sue, because every single day, we have to think about the ability when you live in this country, to be able to have freedom of speech, to have freedom of the press. Look at us. We could talk about anything. Imagine that you lived in places like China. Could you do that? 

Sue Wilhite 11:47

No, no, not at all and we just saw evidence of that. 

Susan Brender 11:52

Correct?

Sue Wilhite 11:53

Somebody tried to say that there is this horrible, deadly disease and got shut down for it.

Susan Brender 12:01

Correct. That was the beginning of my starting a podcast, which was the Susan Brender Show and it's been a journey. It's taken me down a path to have amazing people on my show and it's exciting and it gives purpose for me, purpose and when I wake up in the morning, I always say to myself, today I'm going to interview people like Sue Wilhite and you know what, it's a pleasure. It's exciting. It gives me the opportunity to educate and inform people and as I do that, I say, this is really my passion. I have fulfilled my passion.

Sue Wilhite 12:48

Absolutely. As far as I'm concerned, that's what life needs to be about, is fulfilling your passion that is in service to humanity. That's what it's all about. But it's not always easy to do. So, tell me, Susan, about some of the challenges. What were some of the, in Joseph Campbell's format, he calls them the hideous monsters that you get to go up against and you either have to slay them, or you have to conquer them or you have to turn them around, convert them in some way. But there's these challenges that you come up against that really have you dig deep and find things about yourself that you didn't know you have?

Susan Brender 13:46

That's really a kind of interesting thing because when I started doing podcasting, I thought, well, I have to get the most wonderful people on my show and I was fortunate, I got to tell you, I was very fortunate. I had Lucie Arnaz, I had Ellen Burstyn and all of these people had lives that were quite fascinating. But to try to keep that going, was a challenge for me to try to get the most interesting people on my show and for that reason, I kind of have to pack myself a little bit because it takes persistence and it takes passion. You have to kind of fight your way through it. There's thousands today, thousands of podcasts around and so you're in competition. I'm even in competition with you, Sue, if you will, to try to get the most fascinating people telling their stories. Not everybody wants to tell this story. But I will say this, I was fortunate. What happened one day was I decided that I wanted to find out, what happened during World War II with the Tuskegee Airmen. Now I was able, through really a little bit of luck to be able to find the last man alive who was the Tuskegee Airmen. Now, he's 100 years old and he told the most amazing stories of how he flew over Germany and was shot down and put into a Nazi concentration camp. 

Sue Wilhite 15:31

Oh, my. 

Susan Brender 15:32

That's right and you want to talk about challenge, they had the challenge, the black, Tuskegee men.

Sue Wilhite 15:40

Yes. I mean, to be black and in Germany was, I want to say in a certain way, worse than being Jewish in Germany. 

Susan Brender 15:51

Yes and not only in Germany, here in America.

Sue Wilhite 15:54

Here in America, absolutely. But during World War II, to be a black man and shot down over Germany and put in a concentration camp must have been horrendous.

Susan Brender 16:06

Totally, totally. He told me all different stories of what happened when he was there and when he got out, the challenge for them was to be accepted by the military, as great, great patriots of this country, and people who deserve the accolades that so many of the people get, like the gold medal for heroism.

Sue Wilhite 16:31

Right. They were heroes. 

Susan Brender 16:33

Yes, they were heroes, too. Unfortunately, we didn't and we should have considered them part of our whole military, but they were separated and they knew it and that leads me to talking about the fact that I also did something with the Freedom Riders. They were incredible, they were fascinating and the reason for that is, look what they did? They marched, and they tried to tell people, we're the same. We're human. We're not just black. We're human and people threw rocks at them and they just turn their face, and they kept on walking and they made a dent. Brown versus Board of Education happened after that. A series of things. Look what we're dealing with now. We're dealing with the aftermath of what's going on in this country with the death of Floyd. Now, when people talk all about that, it really has to be thought of as a horrendous act.

Sue Wilhite 17:55

I don't care who you are, strangling another human being is a horrendous act. 

Susan Brender 18:05

Yes, Sue. 

Sue Wilhite 18:06

There's no two ways about it. I don't care whether you have authority or not. Sorry, I'm getting on a rant here, but strangling another human being takes intense.

Susan Brender 18:18

Yeah. There's no doubt about it and the fact is also, though, but riots is another thing. Now I had a debate with somebody the other day that riots, that's not an act of faith, that's not making people feel that they ought to accept you. That turns them away and I'm not ashamed to say that was a horrendous act as well. 

Sue Wilhite 18:49

Yes. Completely. Destruction in general is not the way forward. Do you know what I mean? Sometimes you do need to destroy. I am possibly going to piss off some of my listeners, but I completely agree with tearing down some of the Confederate statues, and getting rid of them and that is an act of destruction. But that is an act of deliberate, wait a minute, we've been raising this up as being a hero and, really, that's not what we want to celebrate. So, we want to put that aside. It's kind of like, well, we were playing with these toys and now, we're not going to play with him, but we've outgrown that and we're going to put this aside. So, that's a different kind of destruction in my mind than simply running down the street breaking windows, stealing, looting and destroying people's livelihoods. It's one thing to go after target. But it's another thing to go after the local shoe repair store or barber shop or you know, bookstore.

Susan Brender 20:18

What would you think Sue if Martin Luther King was alive? How would he think about what's going on?

Sue Wilhite 20:28

Well, he would be totally in favor of the protests. But I think he would call to people to not riot. 

Susan Brender 20:37

Yeah. I said the same thing. 

Sue Wilhite 20:40

[inaudible] matching him being okay with rioting.

Susan Brender 20:44

What about Campbell? Campbell would have something to say about this?

Sue Wilhite 20:50

Well, I'm sure he would, because this is, to a certain extent, the United States call to action. We've had this beginning, when we've had these kinds of band aids. I've heard somebody put it in a very elegant way, and I'm going to probably mangle it. But we've put these legal band aids on and tried to make it such that it would be acceptable and we didn't do enough education to make it acceptable. We just put the legal band aids on and we didn't do the work underneath to have it be something that people would accept. So, you still have here we are, in 2020 and the Brown Act was 55, 56. 

Susan Brender 21:54

Yeah. Correct. 

Sue Wilhite 21:56

So here we are 70 years later and black mothers still have to have the talk with their sons that they had to have in the 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s. They're still having to have the talk. I was horrified to find that out. So, there's the challenges that we're up against, it's our call to action to be human, to make us all human and all be accepting and in the difference between you and me and George Floyd's parents, is like a blip in our DNA. It's like one little molecule between us and it's insane that we should take that as a difference and take that as them being less than because they're not, they're human beings and they deserve respect, they deserve dignity and deserve education and in the same opportunities that I was given. I wasn't raised rich. My father lost his job three times before I was 12 years old when he finally passed away. We weren't in horrible poverty because my mom still worked. But we weren't rich by any stretch of the imagination and it was opportunities that were given to us, that were available to us that weren't available to my black neighbors. I live just outside of the Fillmore. I know exactly what's going on in San Francisco.

Susan Brender 24:02

It's true. But it's interesting, Sue, though, that the people who are marching are not necessarily black they're white.

Sue Wilhite 24:10

No, they're white, and they're Chinese and they're Filipino and there are lots of people marching from all walks of life and all skin colors. Because black lives matter and until they matter, nobody else can. So, now that we've had this lovely, consciousness, awareness raising conversation, tell me a little bit about the allies that helped you along the way. Obviously, Phil Donahue and Charles Grodin. But one of the things that I want to make clear on the Entrepreneurs Hero's Journey is that you never do it by yourself. You're never alone and don't ever take this somebody slaving in the garage by themselves and becoming successful just doesn't happen. So, who are your allies?

Susan Brender 25:24

Well, if you talking about my podcasts and the people that I interviewed, one of my allies and I call my hero actually happened to be a woman by the name of Tovah Feldshuh, because Tovah, who is very, very, very popular stars, she played Gold in My Year on Broadway. She's in The Walking Dead, you name it, she's there and she said to me, which I loved when I interviewed her, she said, you know what, Susan, it doesn't matter what age you are, it doesn't matter what socio-economic situation you're in, you're in charge of your destiny and when you're in charge of your destiny, you can virtually do anything you want, anything. She said, in my case, I'm going to climb Kilimanjaro, because that is an exciting thing for me to do and I looked at her and I said to myself, you know what, she's a hero. The people who I interviewed, the Tuskegee Airmen, he's my hero, he's 100 years old and he still remembers, and he still tells stories that are incredible, stories of real heroes who've done amazing things. As an entrepreneur, actually, I'll tell you straight out, the person who I think has really kind of projected this desire for me to continue doing what I'm doing is my husband, believe it or not. He has said to me, Susan, you've done some amazing things in your life, and you can continue, doesn't matter what age you are, you can continue. Those are the people who I find that really made my life what it is today. It's a desire to do as much as I can to give people the education and information that they need about subjects that are across the board. I mean, there's not one person, Sue, there are so many. If I went through them, we would be here for the half of the day. But I just want to tell you that it is very true that there always is somebody who helps you and being an entrepreneur is one of the most wonderful things. You kind of have your choice of how you do it, where you do it, why you do it and I love that idea and I really love the idea that Sue Willkie has had me on your show. Thank you.

Sue Wilhite 28:04

Welcome. Thank you. 

Susan Brender 28:06

No, because you've given me a chance to explain a little bit about my life and I am very grateful to you for that. 

Sue Wilhite 28:14

Yes, well, thank you. So, one more segment that I'd love to find out what your viewpoint on it is one of the final stages in the Hero's Journey is the return home and frequently, nearly always, the hero returning home, finds that he or she is now different, and home is different and the homecoming is often challenging, to say the least, because there's been a transformation and people try to put you back into a box, try to make you into what you were before and particularly as entrepreneurs, I find very few entrepreneurs who once they've tasted it, once they've really gotten going with it, they never want to go back. So, tell me if that has shown up and if so, how has that shown up for you?

Susan Brender 29:29

Well when I first started, I was very fortunate that I had a producer who understood that it was my desire to make this happen, my desire to be a podcaster, if you will, or a host of a podcast, and she made me understand that no matter who I am, no matter what I do, it's going to be an accomplishment. I feel that since I've been doing it that I've learned a lot. I've learned it's not easy. I mean, in this field that we're in, this is a tough field and getting sponsors to do the show and getting people to, unfortunately, I'm going to use this word, but to accept the fact that it's not an easy thing. It's very, very transforming. Because now, I don't even care. I say you know what, this is my life. I mean, my investment, if you will, is in my psychological health, it's really doing this kind of thing makes me feel happy and when you're happy, there's nothing better than that and you have a program, which is called Sweet Sound of Success and I think that's what we're about. We're about the sounds of success and I am now pursuing as long as I can, this ability to just be a good host and to give people what they want and I love it. I'm happy to tell you that. 

Sue Wilhite 31:25

Yes, I totally agree with you. It is one of the happiest things for me to be able to share with other people. I'm a connector, in Malcolm Gladwell's organization, I am a connector. I love connecting people to people and here we have this amazing, worldwide internet, where somebody in outer Siberia could be watching my show, and I could connect them to you and you to them. That's mind blowing. At the same time, I could be connected you to somebody who's in South Africa, or in Tuskegee. 

Susan Brender 32:10

Right. It's true and it's happened by the way. It's happened to me, I've interviewed people in Australia, in England. I mean, I've just absolutely done things across the board, because people are people and when you're able to give them information and education about everything, wow, it's such a great feeling, Sue.

Sue Wilhite 32:36

Yes, it is. So, Susan, tell our listeners about your show.

Susan Brender 32:46

So you can find the Susan Brender Show on www.facebook.com and then V for vitality, which is my email page or my website, rather and if you want to get in touch with me, you can get in touch with me at S as in Susan, E as in Edward B-R-E-N-D-E-R@yahoo.com and I look forward to people listening to my shows on YouTube. They can find them there and I also say Sue, and if you don't mind my telling, if somebody would like to be on my show, I would be delighted. Just contact me on sebrender@yahoo.com and I'll be there for them and we'll talk about the possibilities. So, thank you very much, Sue, for letting me talk and letting me be on your show.

Sue Wilhite 33:40

Well, thank you, Susan and I will say if anybody does want to be on Susan's show, she is a fabulous interviewer and you will just have the best time. So, thank you, everybody, for listening. Thank you so much, everyone who has made this possible and we will wrap up this episode of the Sweet Sound of Success. What are your dreams for your business? You know what drives me crazy, really smart business owners denying their talents because they've been taught it has to be hard, because they've been taught that they don't deserve their gifts, that they're not worth anything. They've been taught that their gender means they can't express their genius. I'm Sue Wilhite, and I want you to have access to your genius. I want you to go out and rock the world with your genius. So, I created the call-to-action coaching program. It's all about getting to the heart of you and what you've got to share with the world to make a profitable business that thrives and allows you to make a difference in the world. Click the link to sign up for the call-to-action coaching program today. Don't let your genius go unnoticed.