JR Ridinger
speaker
234 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard Nov 2024
JR Ridinger’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Welcome to the friendly skies. I was like, I don't wanna fly with Eastern. I don't even like Eastern Airlines. I would say anything I could not to get the job. Sure enough, I got the job. Crazy enough, I got a letter four weeks later. You've been hired. You got to go to Atlanta. You got to go through training. And here's this guy I just met six months before who I'd fallen in love with already.
He was telling me about one day people are going to buy everything they want from their water bottles to their vitamins, to their shoes, to their clothes online. Wow. And people thought we were crazy. And so, including my father. That was crazy. And it was crazy. That's, you know, 1989, 1990. And he said, I went to the training and I told my dad, I don't want to do this.
And I told my mom, you got to help me get out of this. And Jer called me. And he, you know, just my boyfriend at the time, he said, if you don't come home and tell your dad that you don't want to be an Eastern Airline flight attendant, you're going to become a version of yourself that you never meant to be. Wow. That was a big moment in my life.
And I didn't understand it then until after I lost air.
So often in my life, I've met people who say, well, I became a doctor because that's what my dad expected. Or I became a teacher because that's what my mom expected. Or I just became a homemaker because that's what my husband expected. And you often meet people, and I'm sure you have too, that become somebody that they never meant to be.
And if I had to came home and fired Eastern Airlines and told my dad I was leaving and I was gonna do this thing called the internet, I would have been somebody I wasn't supposed to be.
We didn't have any money.
That didn't really exist at that time. Didn't even exist. I mean, it was there, but it was mostly data driven at the time. You know, you could find some data on people, not everything we can find out about you or me today.
But it was information mostly. You know, the thought of somebody going to you and saying, I want to sell your product and I want to put it online seemed preposterous at the time.
And I think that, you know, even back when I think about the early meetings of our company of Shop and Market America in 92, J.R. and I would go to these, you know, not the meetings that you, not the meetings you go to with me now that you've seen that we do with thousands of people.
No, no, they love you.
But back in the day, it was, you know, seven, eight, nine people.
And we would drive all over the country after I quit Eastern Airlines. And, you know, I would watch Derek get up on stage and he would in front of seven, eight people, you know, a little platform in front. And he would tell people, one day people are going to buy their products online. They're going to buy their shoes, their socks, everything.
And at 18 years old at the time, I would watch the people in the room and they didn't respond well. You know, they'd look at him like he was crazy. And after the meeting, he'd be like, that was a great meeting, wasn't it? You know his personality. That was fantastic. Wow, we killed him. We crushed him. We crushed it. And I was like, I'm not sure.
They didn't seem to think that when I saw their faces. He goes, it doesn't matter what they think, Lauren. What matters is what you think. What do you think? Wow. Do you think we can do it? Do you believe what I tell you when I tell you we can change the world, you and I? We can get people to buy things online. Do you believe? Because that's all that matters to me.
Because if nobody else believes but you and I and we put blinders on, we can make this happen. We didn't have any money. He's how old at the time? He's in his early 20s. He was 36. I was 18. That's pretty crazy. Everybody thought we were crazy. They're like, why are you dating this guy? I don't have any money. He's older. He doesn't have anything to offer you.
You can have a future in journalism, which is where I thought I was going. And I was just mad for him. He was magical. Everything he said made perfect sense. It didn't matter if he didn't have money to take me on a date. That didn't matter. I just wanted to be around him. That personality, that charismatic man who meant so much to me and cared about people like you do, actually.
And I was learning. I was a child. I was 18. So when he said that to me, do you believe in it? I was like, yeah, he goes, improve it. You do the meeting tomorrow. Show me. I thought, how do I break up with this guy before we get to the next meeting? All I kept thinking about was like, exactly, the whole way we were driving from Dallas to San Antonio, I'll never forget.
And I was like, how am I going to break up with him? On the way, I was too afraid to speak. I'd never spoken. That's everybody's biggest fear.
Oh, yeah, and dying.
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