In this Gangland Wire episode, host Gary Jenkins sits down with RJ Roger, Host of No Excuses with Michael DiLeonardo podcast, to delve into his fascinating book, The Don: 36 Rules of the Bosses. In this book, RJ outlines 36 leadership rules derived from effective leaders’ behaviors in organized crime and corporate America. These rules, rooted in extensive historical research on the five New York mafia families, highlight universal power dynamics in all hierarchical structures, offering actionable insights for anyone striving to succeed—whether as a business executive or an everyday worker.

RJ challenges the romanticized portrayal of mob life, focusing instead on the stark realities of leadership within the mafia. Together, Gary and RJ draw parallels between the underworld and legitimate organizations. For example, RJ discusses the principle of “using skilled men to your benefit,” a lesson that applies across industries—including Gary’s experience in law enforcement. Both mafia bosses, police commanders, and corporate leaders face the challenge of navigating human dynamics, where the rules of engagement can make or break their success.

Throughout the conversation, RJ shares captivating stories of mob bosses and their relationships with underlings, shedding light on the nuances of leadership. The discussion touches on the importance of appearances, with RJ explaining how a leader’s presentation can shape perception and loyalty among followers. He emphasizes the delicate balance of being approachable and authoritative to maintain command—an insight that resonates across fields.

Please tune in to this thought-provoking episode to uncover the leadership lessons from the mafia that can inspire and guide us in our endeavors.

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Transcript

Speaker1:

[0:00] Well, hey, all you wiretappers out there. Good to be back here in studio of Gangland Wire. This is Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective and later sergeant. I’m back here with another guest, an author and a fellow mob podcaster, RJ Roger. Welcome, RJ.

Speaker0:

[0:17] Thank you for having me, Gary. And I mean that this is not just camera stuff. I always wanted to have a discussion with you. I remember reaching out to you on Twitter once over before I even started working with Michael. And I just, as a respecter of what you do, because you have an elegant, classy podcast and in what we do, it ain’t the norm. So I’m a major respecter.

Speaker1:

[0:41] Well thank you thank you i i kind of back i didn’t understand that twitter thing back there but i have some vague memory that i don’t know anyhow well finally we meet and we just had a nice little discussion about mutual mutual woes in the podcast industry and personal uh personal things to get to know each other a little bit and guys uh i assure you rj knows what he’s talking about and he’s a true gentleman and he has a great podcast you know uh you know i’m the one i have to take credit for this, RJ. I’m the one that got Mikey scars or Michael D. Leonardo on the air the very first time by happenstance and luck in a way I find out, but then I knew it was, it was just a lucky just somehow he just felt a certain way one day and he said, yeah, I’ll come on your podcast. And now RJ has Mikey scars or Michael D. Leonardo on his podcast regularly. So you want to check that podcast out. Uh, tell us just a little bit about your podcast, RJ, so guys can find it

Speaker0:

[1:40] But you are right i always get i always take the credit i brought michael scars out of the shadows yeah and i got that line from um coast of notion news that was like his headline he said rj roger brings michael de leonardo from the shadows and but the truth is you were the first guy to have to do a discussion with him i just so you took the

Speaker0:

[2:03] the ball up the field and i took it over the you.

Speaker1:

[2:06] Took it over the goal line

Speaker0:

[2:07] Um so as far as the show with michael and i i was a original was doing a solo mob podcast and i made a production i made a show on michael and it made its way to him through his son he liked it he reached out to me we became friends so that’s a fast forward very fast way of how we met and for the first several months We were just friends. I met him in person. I flew out to see him. We spent some time together. And we were kind of… Talking about some different things. And eventually we came together and made an agreement on working together. Took him a while to want to come out and do like a long form show. But, but again, it wasn’t our relationships, not a business relate. It wasn’t a business relationship. We were friends that started a show. We wasn’t business guys that became friends. We were friends first and then started the show. So we’re at, we’re on YouTube.

Speaker0:

[3:07] You can search Mikey Scars Find our show Our YouTube show We’re primarily on Patreon now Same name, Mikey Scars We do 8 shows a month on Patreon And it’s been We’ve done a lot of really good stuff We talk about a lot of things in his life And he goes back In my opinion, the last live and made, Major Five family figure that’s out there His name goes back to Sicily over 100 years He has a long, long history He’s three, four generations deep inside of Cosa Nostra. So it’s been fun to talk with a guy who has so much understanding of the life in a more nuanced way.

Speaker1:

[3:47] Yeah, he really does. And he’s articulate enough that he can really, as you say, a nuanced way, he can tell the story. And so, you know, now you’ve done this book here, The Don, 36 Rules of the Boss.

Speaker1:

[4:03] R.J. Roger. Now, is this your first book? I’m not sure. I can’t remember.

Speaker0:

[4:08] Yes, it’s my first official book. That’s a major release book, traditional published book, first one.

Speaker1:

[4:16] Didn’t you tell me that you also used some stuff from Michael in your book to help explain some of these rules of the boss? Because he’s got firsthand knowledge of that. That’s not like just reading it from somebody else who got it from somebody else. He’s got firsthand knowledge of working with a boss.

Speaker0:

[4:35] Now, the first, the 30, so what I had done, I wrote the 36 rules before I even met Michael, years and years before I met Michael. That was really, I had this theory on 36 rules of a mafia don, of a boss, just a boss, not a captain or underboss. I looked at, you know, the history of the American mob bosses in the five families. And I’ve researched their whole life, like the social behavior study, essentially. And I didn’t look at the mafia for what they claim to be. We’re honored society. We only kill our own. We don’t deal in drugs. We don’t touch a boss. You’re untouchable. You can’t kill without permission. All the stuff that they claim to be, that’s not these 36 rules because a lot of that is.

Speaker0:

[5:22] Fluff. It’s not real. So I looked at their actual behaviors. Like what did they actually do? How did they actually treat people? Were they truly an honored society? So I looked at their history and what I found is 36 common things that you could find among the leaders of the five families. So I wrote that theory. That theory that I completed was what I was taking around. Michael didn’t, I didn’t even know Michael yet, that theory. And then when I met my agent and producer, he said, you know, we need to do more storytelling and give more examples so readers can understand how these rules are applied. So we began to re-edit the book and re-craft the book. And that’s what you have here. And some of Michael’s quotes and a couple of things he said, I used in some of the historical narratives that I put in the book. But largely, I met Michael late down the line. I was done with the book, really. I put a couple of quotes and things in, but I met Michael when the book was already completed. Even this version of it.

Speaker1:

[6:26] You know, I’m looking at some of these rules, like use a skilled man to your benefit. It’s kind of like as a sergeant in the police department, I had a tax squad or had an intelligence unit. I would try to find skilled people to bring them in and then use them to my benefit, if you will, because I’m the sergeant, I’m the boss here. I get the credit and then my captain gets the credit, too, because you have this really skilled guy. So a lot of these rules are just what somebody in business would use, it appears to be.

Speaker0:

[6:56] Well, I’m glad you said that because I’m not so into the mafia. I like to read about the subject a little bit and watch the movies, but I wouldn’t have spent 12 years of my life working on a mob book necessarily

Speaker0:

[7:11] that has no moral value or something that’s not beneficial to people. A regular working Joe, a guy like yourself, a guy that’s a police officer or a guy who’s working in some kind of legitimate business. So the concept behind the whole thing is exactly what you said. People all people are not gangsters but gangsters are people and there’s a particular way in a capitalistic society a society that respects capitalism and has a hierarchy structure of you start at a entry level and through your your service you rise up within it and you.

Speaker0:

[7:54] In that type of model, the rules are kind of all the same. So in the mafia, you start as an associate and you have to prove yourself and become more skilled to rise up to the head of it. And that’s the same thing if you’re coming out of college and you get an entry level job and through service, you rise up and you prove yourself to be worthy of maybe being the CEO one day or the president one day. And a lot of what you find, that process, it’s the same. It doesn’t matter who’s rising in. You can be an illegitimate enterprise or something that’s illegit. Either way, the rules are kind of similar. So if you look at this book in a figurative manner, you’ll find, you know, that we’re all kind of operating in a similar way. I believe you can test these rules against Donald Trump or an American politician, against a CEO of a Wall Street firm, against somebody in the high academia who’s running Oxford or Harvard or something that’s really big and profitable. You’ll find these rules. You can find them in how and how very achieved and accomplished and ambitious people rise.

Speaker1:

[9:19] Interesting. You know, and talking about the kind of the early days of the mafia, I have I know I know on Facebook one time I had a guy comment, a local Italian guy who’s kind of connected. He made a comment when he saw my picture with some other guys. He said, well, there’s a guy in this picture that writes bad things about Italians. And so I was talking with T.J. English not too long ago. I interviewed him and we were talking about this. And he’s examined Irish when they first came over and paddywhacked and Cubans in three books now. And we’re talking about immigrants when they come to the United States. You know, they want the American dream. that’s what they they come here wanting the american dream some of them uh you know original black handers came here as brought their uh gangsterism and their their criminal behavior with them but most guys just came wanting the american dream and when you first get here in america you’re you’re held out you’re you’re pushed out of any early jobs you know the irish time the italians got here the irish already had the police and the fire and the government jobs sewed up and a lot of businesses. And so you got bright young guys,

Speaker1:

[10:30] That are looking, you know, to live the American dream and their prohibition came along and it’s illegal, but there was a way for them to achieve the American dream. And so that’s why it is, it really is the mafia organization that started with young immigrants trying to achieve the American dream. Would you agree with that?

Speaker0:

[10:49] Oh, 100%. That’s why I don’t have these harsh opinions on immigrants that we see that’s being really pushed by the media, Because I do understand that most people who come over to this country, it’s not the guy that you arrested for doing a crime. He’s not reflective of the mass amount of people who come here. A lot of them are just trying to have an opportunity for a better education, a better social standing, you know, a way to buy a little piece of land, a piece of property or something, put the kids in a good school, get an education. That’s what most people come here for. So even if you look at even with the mafia, you know, I think Joe Bonanno, one of Joe Bonanno’s kids said this on Chris Wallace that, you know, by even all FBI standards, there was never more than like 3,000 made members in America at any given time ever. When you have millions of people come over from Italy, you know, and if you really think about how many were in the criminal element, it’s like not even 1%. So you can’t, but all the Italians, when they came over, they faced unending scrutiny. They were accused of taking American jobs, being dirty.

Speaker0:

[12:02] Being gangsters, being, you know, they were diseased. And they were all these things that they put all these words on a whole group of people that really most of the people that came over just wanted opportunities for their kids and a better job and a better way to live.

Speaker1:

[12:23] Really. And so as they organize and they move into this business of prohibition, basically, and they have to really organize, you know, from the top down in order to make it work, you know, they have, you know, they develop these business rules that you talk about in here. I was looking at this one, Mixed with the Soldiers.

Speaker1:

[12:43] Now, that’s one that Paul Castellano forgot to do, and it cost him his life at the end. Is that a good example for that, Mixed with the Soldiers?

Speaker0:

[12:54] And if you look at the legitimate world, if you’re working in policing, so let’s say you’re a captain, the police captain or the commissioner or something. If he’s on the floor coming down he knows your name hey mr jenkins how you doing it’s good to see you today while he’s making his coffee he goes hey how how are things going out on this you know is anything i can do more for you you okay no i’m okay thank you but it’s good to see you and thank you for taking that time to speak with me but if you have a lot of grievances as a policeman and you have, you never see your boss to voice them to, but every time you do see your boss, he just has something bad to say like, Gary, you forgot to load your clip or something. I don’t know. Um, you know, it gets to a point that this other guy is making his way, this new guy, you’ve been seeing this new guy coming up and he always comes up to you and he’s bringing you solutions to your problems and he’s helping you and he’s on the scene with you.

Speaker0:

[14:01] You will start to unify the large group. Remember, the boss is only one person. The captain’s just one person. The commissioner’s just one person. These seats are occupied by one, but desired by many. So when you don’t mix with the soldiers, you end up like what happened to Frank Costello, what happened to Paul Costolano. When you put yourself far distance from what you’re leading, you will cause the people who are following you to think he doesn’t care about us and they’ll turn. So what I have found is the bosses that held on to their families versus the bosses that maybe lost their family or were usurped.

Speaker0:

[14:46] You can find the difference was those bosses were there, hands on. John Gotti was very good at that. He was at the rave at night. The associates, the soldiers could kiss him. They could see him. Carlo Gambino had a home right there where everybody was at. You know, he purposely stayed there. But then Paul goes in this big mansion and just distanced himself from everybody. And Costello was doing the same thing. He was just wanting to be around legitimate people. And that’s what made Costello, that’s what made Vito Genovese so attractive. It was, he was here with us. I’d rather follow the guy who’s here proving he he respects us than being following an order from a guy who looks down on us. And it’ll be the same thing you’ll find in the leader of a political party. You know, if you’re the head of a political party, but you don’t even know the members or anything that you’re leading, they will turn and elect somebody else out.

Speaker0:

[15:44] They will vote you out when you seem distant from the people who you’re leading. So you got to mix with them to keep their loyalty.

Speaker1:

[15:51] I think we don’t need to look any further than the most recent election to see how that plays out for sure.

Speaker0:

[15:58] When you see, if you take Donald Trump, for example, when you see Donald Trump show up when the political, when the media is really beaten down on the Republican Party, let’s say, for not passing a certain thing or not doing something. And they’re taking a lot of abuse, the Republicans in Congress, let’s say. And then Trump shows up on Capitol Hill and stands in front of all of them and takes a picture and poses the picture. They like that because they’re saying, we’re not alone in this. Trump came and he stood here with us and said, guys, we’re going to stand together on this and we’re going to get through it. It makes them unify behind him or anybody. But when your leader just leaves you out to rot, you start saying, forget about this guy. You start wanting somebody else.

Speaker1:

[16:54] Yeah, interesting. Look at some of these others. Let’s talk about breaking the rules, breaking the rules in a way that makes people muddy. Would that be? Give us some examples of breaking the rules. Can you think of any?

Speaker0:

[17:08] Well, that’s the funny thing is that the people who follow the rules, they’re more linear type of people. They just, the rule is this. I follow the rule. Life is a little easier if you can just follow the rules. You don’t have to.

Speaker1:

[17:21] It is.

Speaker0:

[17:23] But following the rules remember rules are put in place to protect the person who is in power, but the guy that got into power he did not get there by following the rules rules are purposely in place to limit you and protect the guy who set them so you will never make it to boss if you think that your boss is not allowed to be killed because the rule is you can’t kill a boss. But most of the time, the boss killed his boss. That’s how he became a boss. So he broke the rule to make the rules, you know? So I find that, The people in life that challenge the rules are willing to go around the rules, circumvent the rules.

Speaker0:

[18:12] Those are the people who set everything that the general public is following. You don’t get there by following the rules. So John Gotti broke the rules. He’s the popular example. I use John Gotti because everyone knows his name, but the purpose of the book was more studied with the older guys. But a lot of the guys, Lucky Luciano broke the rules. He killed multiple bosses, right? He killed Mazzaria. He killed Maranzano. And he came in and he broke rules to become what he became.

Speaker1:

[18:47] He brought the Jews there. He brought Jewish people in too.

Speaker0:

[18:50] I mean, he- There you go. And that wasn’t common back then. Yeah. That’s where the use the skilled man to your benefit comes from. Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel. These were Jewish. Bugsy Siegel was very good with a pistol. He could kill very good. I need him on my team. Mario Lansky, well read. Understand he understood finance. He understood markets. He understood Frank Costello was very good with wooing politicians, with courting politicians, getting them on the side. Lucky put all these people around him and used what they were very good at to his benefit. But Lucky was in drugs. He really was in drugs. and the mafia was not supposed to be in drugs. But a lot of bosses were in drugs. They were always into drugs, right? But they would tell certain people in the family, you can’t deal with drugs or you die. So the rules are for, it’s a particular type of a personality is all I can say. A boss has a different mindset than a captain or a capo regime. A capo is a capo because he doesn’t have that ability to…

Speaker0:

[20:02] Be a boss. If he was, he wouldn’t be like, I can’t do that because my boss told me no. Bosses don’t think like that. I always say, I don’t mean to belabor the point, but Neil Delacroach, he wasn’t a boss. No matter what everybody says, he was too loyal. He was too loyal to the rules to be the boss because anybody else would have, Neil Delacroach should have just clipped Paul and took over the family, broke the rule, took over the family, like all the bosses historically have done in the Gambino family. John did it. John had the boss capability. Clearly, Neil didn’t, because if Neil did, he would have went in and been the boss. But he followed the rules.

Speaker1:

[20:45] Yeah, well, when old man Gambino died and, you know, he said, my nephew here is going to be the boss, Neil just says, okay, you know, I have found nothing where he ever expressed any dissatisfaction with. He just, okay, the boss is the boss. I mean, the famous line when he’s talking to, what is it, Ruggiano, you know, the boss is the boss is the boss. I mean, you’re right. I never thought about it quite like what you’re saying, but that is really interesting insight you had,

Speaker0:

[21:16] RJ. That makes him a very great underboss.

Speaker0:

[21:21] You want that a boss, he looks for new qualities in his underboss. He wants a guy who loves and respects the culture and the society and the rules because he doesn’t have to worry about, remember, a boss’s greatest fear at night is what is my underboss thinking? Because remember, to be a boss, you were first an underboss or very close to that, right? So a boss knows how everybody in the family is thinking. He knows what the associates think. Man, I got to get on record with somebody and prove myself. He knows what the soldier’s thinking after he’s made. Oh, one day I really want to be a captain. He knows what the captains are thinking. I’m so close to the top, I can almost taste it. So the boss knows how everyone’s thinking. But the captains, the soldiers, the underboss, the consulier, all of them, none of them know how a boss is thinking. Even if they think they do, you don’t know what a boss is thinking until you’re the boss because now you’re in a cul-de-sac. There’s no way out. Boss is the top place you go. And it’s very scary to be at the top because you got everybody in your family who wants what you got.

Speaker0:

[22:38] But Neil, like I said, is a great, he’s a perfect underboss. He’s not going to usurp you. He’s not going to kill you. he’s not going to let the captains galvanize against you. We heard him on tape. He was trying to talk John Gotti and, Quack off the ledge. That’s why you guys don’t understand Cosa Nostra. Cosa Nostra means that the boss is your boss. You understand?

Speaker1:

[23:04] I’m going to tell you, if you two ever bothered me again, I can’t in the rest of my life. I ain’t giving them credit. I can’t. They might tackle him. She would have to cut the line on them, say. Now he’s a boy. You have to put the money in college in there. You see, that’s why I’m so confusing for you. You know what I’m saying? I’m going to be honest right to you. I lost you a million for a boy since you’re a boy.

Speaker0:

[23:27] He was trying to, you guys have to respect this man. That’s your boss. He’s your God.

Speaker1:

[23:35] Yeah. I didn’t realize he was talking to a rebel guy that will break the rules. He thought everybody was like him, didn’t he?

Speaker0:

[23:46] There you go.

Speaker1:

[23:48] You know, I see this one dress dapper. And I tell you why I’ve said something about this is I have an FBI agent friend, Bill Owsley, who was a case agent on the straw man case and was the most famous agent in Kansas city, probably a certain era FBI is probably one of the most famous agents in the United States with the, uh, cause he was a case agent over the, uh, uncovering all the skimming from Las Vegas. And, and he made a comment one day. He said, you know, he said, these guys, these modern mobsters, he said, you know, they used to wear, you know, expensive, you know, tailored suits really dress nice. He said, And now what he got, they got guys running around in track suits.

Speaker1:

[24:29] He said, no wonder the mafia is going down. So dress dapper and John Gotti did do that. I’ll say that using, keeping on the John Gotti tracks. And it’s such a great example, but he did dress dapper and all those older guys did for sure.

Speaker0:

[24:44] You know, people in general are very weak in what they, from what they see. Our eyes lie to us all the time. And very achieved people understand that the human is very easy to seduce. The human brain is very easy to seduce. You know, that’s why I read about this before, but blind people typically have more…

Speaker0:

[25:13] Like a stronger intuition and things like that than people who can see because they’re forced to be able to read your sincerity and things like that, a handshake and things. They’re better because they don’t have the luxury of the eye. So young children are very perceptive before or a baby, a newborn that doesn’t even understand words yet.

Speaker0:

[25:44] When your child is laughing and playful, and then somebody just walks in and the kid goes and looks at them and starts crying and gets very, everything changes because they’re sensing a certain energy and things like that. So dressing the way we appear is an easy way to trick a person. Very easy. You come, when you come looking shabby, looking down, that’s not an inspiring look. We love to see a person come in looking very astute and strong and powerful and acclaimed. And it almost makes you want to follow that man because you want to be like him. You want the whole room to stop and look at you. You want people to follow you. So now you need more than just your appearance, but the way you appear really does draw people in. And if you want to be a boss, you’re going to have to look like one also. You have to present yourself as one also. So you’re not inspired by a man that you see in tattered clothes.

Speaker0:

[26:54] You ain’t inspired by a man that comes in looking like he works on the back of a dump truck. And I don’t mean nothing disparaging towards anyone that does these professions. I’m just saying we are inspired to follow what looks achieved.

Speaker1:

[27:10] Yeah. Yeah. I know when, when I was a sergeant in plain clothes, I always tried to dress just a little bit better than the best desk detective that I had under me.

Speaker0:

[27:22] And that’s, and that’s how I’ve always been as a professional. Like, I never, I will go into, I talk about in that section of the book, you can be, the boss can have a meeting in a pissy alleyway. It reeks of urine. But he still arrives for the alleyway Bensonhurst meeting, chauffeured in a suit. He walks in that alley. And even though the guys he’s meeting with have on denim and or a track suit, do you know who walks away feeling ashamed? The boss doesn’t walk away feeling like, man, I came overdressed. The guys in the track suit said, fuck, we should have had a suit on. And I always invoke that as a professional, personally. I always came… One step ahead of dressed appeared better than anybody else. This interview, I had on a black hoodie when I came here.

Speaker1:

[28:21] I keep dress shirts in my office. I quickly changed a dress shirt and put my hat on before I walked in here.

Speaker0:

[28:28] Well, there we go. So you’re respecting the art of dress dapper. So I’m not wearing this shirt all day today. I keep collared shirts in my office. And I came in here with, I mean, you might think, oh, he probably has on some nice dress pants. But if you really look, I got on some blue sneakers.

Speaker1:

[28:48] I’m not even showing you my pants.

Speaker0:

[28:50] And I got on some cargo pants with a buckle. But what you see me in is I know I should appear with a nice collar shirt and look presentable for the guy who’s watching. And that’s how we should be in general. You should appear in your best if you

Speaker0:

[29:09] want to be respected as your best.

Speaker1:

[29:11] Really i tell you what guys out there i’m speaking to y’all out there you know just get this book just for tips on how to conduct your own life if you want to have success in your own life in your own work whatever you do there’s you just follow a lot of these tips now you don’t want to kill the boss i think we have a a chapter here called kill the boss but and we’ve talked about that a little bit but no hold on yeah when you’re killing politically i’ve seen that happen well that’s

Speaker0:

[29:39] What i’m talking about so you’ll see um if you look at the presidential campaign trump had to quote unquote kill the boss he had to present a case on this biden guy is not for you.

Speaker1:

[29:54] Yeah i

Speaker0:

[29:56] Gotta take he’s not physically gonna shoot him but he has to take him out of power that’s the theory behind kill the boss, Take you out of power. If you’re in middle management, your boss is the boss. And you want his job. You want to be the vice president of sales and marketing. Right now, you’re an outside sales guy. You want his job. You’re going to have to maybe politic a little bit and do little things. And his boss is the president of the company. Maybe you’re doing little things going to the guy above him, trying to get him eliminated. You know, he’s not showing up to meetings. I don’t want my name to be involved in this. Like you start doing little back. I’m sure you see it in your line of profession.

Speaker1:

[30:42] You saw people.

Speaker0:

[30:44] There you go. So you see people politicking to take what you got. So kill the boss in a figurative way is just saying. You are going to have the rule is don’t talk against Gary. Gary’s the boss. Don’t walk around because Gary’s going to fire you. If he finds out John Gotti is going to kill you. If he finds out that you’re talking subversive as Sammy claimed Louie, Louie, Louie was, right? Yeah. So, Hey, he’s talking subversive. He’s talking a little talking subversive about me. Yeah. I mean, you know, and then the boss. Who’s you and your line of work. If you find out that you got people underneath you who are. Talking subversive, trying to come for what you got, they’re end running you, they’re creating lies about you. You’re going to say, write them up, sit them down, call HR. We got to get this figured out. And in your head though, you’re just taking a professional approach to killing him. You want to get him out of the company. He can’t work for me. I don’t want him under me. I can’t trust him. But what that guy was trying to do was take you out because he wants what you got. And you see that a lot in the legitimate world where people politic on the side against their boss. They talk against their boss, but laugh in his face and, hey, Mr. Jenkins, would you like a cup of coffee? How many sugars do you want in it?

Speaker0:

[32:10] And they brought the coffee back perfect. And you drank it and said, wow, that boy makes a great cup of coffee, two creamers, one pack of sugar perfectly mixed, but you didn’t know he spit in it.

Speaker1:

[32:21] Yeah yeah oh yeah i’ll tell you what happened to me this is a guy that used to work for me as my last job in the intelligence unit where i retired and i didn’t retire out of it because this guy he had i wouldn’t let him do something he wanted to do and he had retired and he was still around and so he one day plays golf with the colonel over intelligence unit that’s like two steps above me and, but he plays golf with him and he denigrates the shit out of me and, and trying to get his buddy who wants to be the Sergeant in there. And I find out later that all of a sudden the Colonel sends word down, you know, Hey, I want Jenkins out of there, you know, and this is who I want in that, you know, in a military paramilitary organization, that’s, what’s going to happen is I’m out back to dog watch and central or Metro patrol, uh, on the streets, uh, driving a district car. I was still a sergeant, but you know, I had to go from having my own personal take-home car to going to work at dog watch at a, uh, uh, inner city station. So it’s, uh, I know how it happens, man. It happens. They just didn’t kill me like they do in the mob.

Speaker0:

[33:30] And would you agree that, how long were you in a position of leadership professionally? I’m just curious. Like, how many consistently?

Speaker1:

[33:37] I guess 84 to 96. So 10, 12 years.

Speaker0:

[33:43] All right. Now, so you know, and I’m sure you’ve talked to people who were doing it even longer than you. And I’m sure what you have learned is when you can sit there for 12 straight years, you start seeing it all. You start learning. And have you, did you become, when you first came in, were you like, let’s galvanize everybody, be friends, be family, everyone worked together as colleagues. And then in time you learn that everybody, did you become less trusting as you moved along? More suspicious of people?

Speaker1:

[34:16] I don’t think I was that trusting from day one. I understood the game. I understood the game that I can’t, they’re not my friends. I’ll be fair to everybody, but they’re not my friends. And I made a great effort to not drink with them after work or do anything personal with anybody that worked for me. I was, you know, I was there at work. I made calls with them and I was friendly at work unless, you know, we had some kind of a problem. And then I was just professional, but I had never made that mistake of thinking that they were my friends because I knew they weren’t.

Speaker0:

[34:49] How old were you when you got to that position?

Speaker1:

[34:52] Oh, I was, how old was I? 26. I must’ve been 38, 38 or 39. I said, that’s about 40 years old. I wasn’t, if I’d have been 26, 27 years old, I would have thought they were my friends. I really.

Speaker0:

[35:04] There you go. So you got that time taught you being a little older and seeing more or, yeah, that’s why, you know, a boss can’t be a boss at a very, very young age. And it really isn’t, you just need some grooming. Like the book can only, books can only take you to an intellectual place, but it doesn’t take you to a practical place. So I was a lifelong reader, not lifelong, but I really got into books a lot when I was.

Speaker0:

[35:30] 19 or so. And I read nonstop. And when I got out of college, I realized, man, I have a lot of, you start to learn how the book is only as practical. It’s only as good as your practical abilities and dealing in the actual profession. And you can read all about people until you’re dealing with them. That’s the real training. 25 years old, 26 years old. I just don’t think you have enough dealings with people to understand how they are. So a 26, 27-year-old, they can read 100 books, but you really don’t understand how a guy can look you in the eyes and lie right to your face when you’re 20. But when you’re 39, you’ve seen it. You’ve had guys you trusted who have betrayed you. You’ve had your heart broken. You’ve had some financial problems you’ve seen bad contracts written you’ve seen how the system kind of starts to work and right around that time 35 to 40 is when it’s probably you’re probably had enough experiences depending on how you were living for your first 10 15 years in the work uh the workforce you can understand how people are because you probably would i agree with you 26 27 25 you would say Hey guys, let’s all go out for a beer afterward. But 39, 40, you understand people take kindness for weakness in this world. They really do.

Speaker1:

[36:57] Yeah, they do. There’s no doubt about it. Used to use that on the street every once in a while when I was a young street policeman. It had to be nice to somebody. And I’d say, but I went down and remember my friend, do not take my kindness for weakness. So it’s a, that’s a pretty good thing to have. I see something here in Pooh’s

Speaker1:

[37:15] harsh rules. Can you talk about imposing harsh rules? Now, we know in the mob, you know, you might get killed, but you don’t have any hierarchy of rules, any, you know, written reprimands or anything like that. So talk about that a little bit, RJ.

Speaker0:

[37:31] You know, when you see that the mafia was able to survive as long as it did, I don’t know that any criminal organization has lasted as long as the mafia. We just talk about America, which this book is only based on the creation of the five families only. No other family, just the five in New York So every rule comes out of the heads of the five families But when you see how long they have lasted.

Speaker0:

[37:54] No other organization could do it. The rules in the mafia are very different. There’s not two penalties, three, four. You die if you break this rule. You break rules, you get killed for them. It’s such a harsh penalty that it really keeps people on guard to a certain extent. Um you learn that i say in the book that the bullet keeps a soldier honest the bullet burns leaves a gruesome scar the soldier only learns through the burn of the bullet he doesn’t learn through rhetoric i write that in the book generally speaking soldiers the soldier is the low rank position of the mafia.

Speaker0:

[38:41] These are those 25 year olds, those 23 year olds that think they can play you. I can get Gary to drink the coffee, but they don’t know that Gary took the cup of coffee and tossed it in the sink soon as he walked away. Cause Gary knows you spit in that damn coffee. I know you people, you know, the soldier is that guy who thinks he’s, he’s like that kid at home that doesn’t know that dad knows I took the extra cookie, but you counted the sleeve of cookies before you left and you know he took you know so the soldier in life is that guy that if you you can’t give him a lot of leash you got to keep him got to be tight and strong with these people these as you get up in life you learn you have to be straight with people.

Speaker0:

[39:32] As a captain, you know, talk straight to the boss. As an underboss, you know, talk straight. Don’t try to bullshit him. Don’t do any of that.

Speaker0:

[39:42] Bosses usually struggle the most when dealing with an associate or a soldier. And in life, high people in the company struggle with dealing with the bullshit at the bottom. That’s where the hierarchy comes from. You put people in place that can deal with these jackasses because you have lost your patience for dealing with them, you know? So, but you need harsh rules to keep people in line. If you don’t have a harsh rule, people get all out of line. They do whatever they want. Humans naturally want to break rules. Kids will run all over the house unless, and when mom’s home and then when dad comes home, they stop. Why? They’re the same child because dad’s going to whip my ass and mom won’t. And it’s the same in life. When you got that boss who you know ain’t going to do anything, the boss that ain’t going to kill you, when you got the manager that’s never going to write you up, that’s never going to sit you down, and you know they’re a little intimidated by you, they just walk all over you. But a new guy comes in and it’s a whole different respect given to them. You’re respected for the rules that you set.

Speaker1:

[40:54] Yeah, really. That’s, uh, I had, I had, when I first got promoted to sergeant, I had a guy and who, who, who never should have been a policeman. And so I started out trying to work him like he was street guy. I was trying to run a little surveillance on him and catch him dirty. And then I thought, no, let’s just make him adhere to the rules and, and all the standards real closely. So I backed off from that. And then I watched his productivity and watch his time on calls. And then I’d call him in. I put him on a monthly evaluation program. Oh, he hated it. He hated it. Every month he and I’d sit down together. And, and I, the best I can say is I, I kept him from probably hurting somebody out there because it was the kind of guy when he, if he showed up at a scene and there weren’t any sergeants there and it was any kind of mix up at all, somebody, somebody got hurt and it was, he was in the center of it, but nobody would ever talk about him. And so he actually ended up quitting after about six months and by just riding him and holding his feet to the fire, every time any little rule break came along, I’d make him write it up and we’d sit down and we’d then increase the penalty each time. So you got to sit on people. You got to sit on people.

Speaker0:

[42:09] And you know the worst type of leader, or let’s say boss, it’s the boss that thinks his soldiers love him. It’s the when you because there’s telling the weakness about you you have some inner need to be approved of or liked or respected i mean um it’s some it’s a weakness in you because everybody hates the boss because they want the envious of the boss your soldiers always blame the boss for everything that’s gone wrong in their life you always just look up people very rarely look inward. We look outward. That’s the problem with having eyesight is we can always find something to blame. So when a soldier doesn’t have any money, he can’t feed his family, he’s late on the rent, he blames the guy who he’s following, who’s giving him direction.

Speaker0:

[43:04] Why aren’t you paying me more? He has a million reasons to blame you for every inadequacy in his life. Being a boss is a thankless position. If everything’s going good, well, it’s supposed to go good. You’re the boss. You know, if everything’s going bad, what the hell does this boss do all day? So it’s like, you’re never thanked for the position that you’re in. It’s a very thankless job. So a boss has to be able to thank himself and know what his value is. I keep people safe. They don’t see it. I kept that bad cop off the street because I knew he was going to hurt people. But no one sees that you did that. That’s just expected of you to be able to do that.

Speaker0:

[43:45] So yeah, it’s a really, but the boss that needs approval is.

Speaker0:

[43:52] Will trip over himself. He will be tricked and misled and by the people who he’s leading because he thinks they like him. He thinks that they approve of, of him, but they don’t, they don’t like him. They’re very nice to his face, but they gain say behind his back. They, they talk against them in his ear. He’s a stupid, this he’s every problem that exists is your fault in their mind.

Speaker1:

[44:23] Blame everything on they yeah they won’t let me do this they won’t they won’t let me do that every time i use the word they i catch myself like oh who’s they

Speaker0:

[44:34] Ultimately what you know what a boss of a really great boss when i say boss i just mean a person who has you know authority over their life and they’re living their life by their standard and they have met the, they have risen to boss for the purpose of this book is applied to who, to what your personal greatest desire is. So if you’re six years old and your desire is to become a principal of a school or you’re 10 years old and you decide or fifth, whatever, and you decide, I want to be a principal one day and run a, or run a school, or I want to be a school teacher.

Speaker0:

[45:11] And you rise to that place. That’s your personal boss. You made it to where you want it to go. You wanted to be a boss. I mean, to you, the greatest success for you was to be a school teacher. You made it there. And there’s a process that you’ll have to go through to get there. Going through school, passing your tests, passing the boards, getting, you know, passing your interview. And you did it. You’re the boss for yourself. You made it to where you wanted to get to. If your personal thing was to be a police sergeant or a captain, and there’s a process. There’s a process to becoming a mafia don, a mafia boss. If you were, Michael Scars said that his goal since he was seven years old was to become a captain of the Gambino family.

Speaker0:

[45:56] He didn’t want to be a boss. He wanted to be captain of the Gambino family. He knew since he was seven years old. He used to say it to himself all the time. I’m going to be the captain one day. When he got promoted to captain for himself, he rose to boss. These 36 rules apply to Michael getting to captain. You can apply these 36 rules to get yourself to be a school teacher, to become a sergeant in the police department. Where do you want to go? There’s a process. And if you get there, for me, I wanted to do this. I wanted to become a Manhattan published author and do a real book and have it in stores around the country. I don’t really have much more that I feel like I have to do. I wanted to do this, but I don’t need to. This is my version of my boss. This is Don RJ, you know? So yeah. Don Roger.

Speaker1:

[46:52] Well, yeah, it’s interesting. You know, when I was a kid, I just wanted to be a cowboy and have a horse and a rifle and a six shooter and go out and save people. and I became a policeman. They gave me a Plymouth Fury and a shotgun and a Smith & Wesson 38. So I achieved mine back then. Everything since then has just been gravy. So this has been great. I mean, guys, you got to get this book. If you care about your own personal success, you know, get this book. If you like the mob, you know, get this book, but you can apply all those rules to your own life. I can see that right now. I know I look as I read this and talk with R.J. About it, you know, they worked in my life and they’ll work in your life, too, to live your life like it’s suggested in this book.

Speaker0:

[47:41] Let me ask you, did you ever, like when you, let’s say, I’m just going to grab one at random, speak the language of a soldier. So when you were in your highest position in police and policing, what’s what, you said you were a sergeant?

Speaker1:

[47:55] Sergeant, yeah.

Speaker0:

[47:57] So do you speak, is there a different, when you speak with the cop on the beat, you understand, I’m guessing, because you might have been, you’ve been, to be a sergeant, you’ve been where the guy is at who you’re leading. You understand there’s a different conversation from you and your boss than it is you and him. Do you adjust a bit when you’re speaking to the people that you’re leading? To understand where.

Speaker1:

[48:25] It would depend on the boss i i will you know with with guys on the street that were working for me especially that worked directly for me that would see you know every morning every night when they’d go out and come back in or then maybe make calls with or do some be part of a surveillance team or something with uh why uh you know i was i was more uh more of a peer, but yet, uh, I was the peer among peers with them. And with the captain, it would depend on the personality of my captain. You know, I had one guy for a long time that was, was more like my friend, but I was never a guy that would take advantage of that. And, and, and so we spoke more peer to peer, but if I had somebody, I didn’t know very well, then it was much more formal. And I was all, and I watched what I said to him. I was real careful about what I said to him. And then if like I went back to patrol and I didn’t know anybody that worked for me for a long until I figured out the guys and who I could talk to more frankly and, and who I had to stay totally detached from and professional with. And I would talk differently with them, but it’s a, it’s a constant adjustment. And I’ll bet, I bet all these in the mob world, I bet it’s a constant adjustment depending on people.

Speaker0:

[49:38] Exactly. And that’s so in the mob world, that’s what Paul started to not do. He spoke, he was reading the Wall Street Journal. He was talking about, he talked like a banker. He’s reading. But you got these guys that dropped out of school in fourth grade, fifth grade, and they’ve been on the streets doing hard knock crimes and their cargo hijacking and selling drugs. And you’re coming down saying, you’re talking in a way they can’t understand. They don’t understand this stuff you’re talking about. Michael always says Paul wanted everybody to own a butcher shop. He wanted everybody to be a businessman. He was speaking in a way that the blue collars, the everyday guys could not understand. They didn’t want to follow a guy like that. What are you talking about a butcher shop, Paul? Let me stop the market. We could put some money in this. What are you talking about? Paul didn’t adjust himself enough to the street dogs, the street animals like John Gotti. And the Bergenhunt and Fish crew, people like that, they didn’t understand. What’s this guy talking about? What are you talking about? We’re going to, this union thing that we could get 500 million. What are you talking about? Paul should have adjusted his speak better when I’m talking to this guy versus talking to that guy.

Speaker0:

[50:55] And you have to know who your audience is in life, in general. And no matter what profession you’re in, you have to, I can promise you, the way trump i keep bringing up trump because he’s just a popular example but the way he talks to the american people where he speaks right at your yeah you know who he’ll speak in a way that i know because because again as a kid he walked around on the construction site picking up nails for his father his father was sent him to pick up rent from low-income people you know in queens and stuff so he was he was around people as a young he was a rich kid but around poor people and work in people a lot when he was younger. So my thoughts are maybe he developed a little understanding on how people talk on a construction site. How does the guy, he heard the guy say, hey, after work, let’s go get a six pack and let’s have a few beers. And he knows what the everyday blue collar guy was doing after work and things like that. But I can promise you the way he talks sometimes where I think it’s a little, whoa, I can’t believe you’re saying this stuff as a president. But why do so many people resonate? I don’t like that kind of conduct, personally. I believe in decorum. You carry yourself as a gentleman. Always. So I don’t agree with the way Trump represents himself. But millions of people like it. He’s speaking to the soldier. He’s speaking the language of a soldier.

Speaker0:

[52:22] I can promise you, though, in my suspicion, when he’s sitting down with world leaders.

Speaker1:

[52:28] He’s not talking like that.

Speaker0:

[52:31] He’s not. He’s adjusting himself.

Speaker1:

[52:34] Yeah. When he’s talking to his friends at the country club down there and playing golf with those guys and that kind of thing. He’s, he’s a different person. We all have to adjust depending on who we’re with. If we want to be successful in life, that’s for sure.

Speaker0:

[52:47] Yeah.

Speaker1:

[52:48] All right. Anything else you want to, any other one of these topics?

Speaker1:

[52:52] There’s a lot more of them, guys. Any other topics you’d like to go over, RJ?

Speaker0:

[52:58] No, anything you, I mean, and just in general, if you want to learn, it’s a twofold book. in many ways. If you want to learn about the psychology of a mafia boss, the social strategies, the social behaviors of a gangster, of a mob boss, great book for you to read because you’re going to, so if you just love mob history or mob psychology, which I don’t think anyone’s ever wrote about the mob psychology, the psychology of a mafia boss. You got it. It’ll be a book that you’ll find some interest in. But if you want to read it in a more allegorical or a more figurative way, where you have some fun and like, oh, in a way, this relates to me. It’s a fun book to read for a guy who’s, you know, like a lot of people read Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince. And in The Prince, Machiavelli says, essentially.

Speaker0:

[53:51] You know, after your boss has trained you, I mean, after your, you know your master has trained you to be a you know great swordsman or have taught you how to be a great on the battlefield or something and you have no more for him to gain, you just behead him cut his head off and take everything he got because you can’t gain nothing else for uh from him it’s the same as kill the boss you know after your boss has mentored and guided you and gave you everything now now he’s just in your way and you’ll it’s just so in a way the way people read Machiavelli in business schools, the way you read like these Sun Tzu, The Art of War. These are war strategies, but you can apply them in a figurative way in your life and in business. So you can read the book in that same kind of concept. You can read the book in a business way, in a personal development way, and you’ll find interesting. So anybody can read it, really. It’s a book for anybody to read. Yeah.

Speaker1:

[54:49] Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. And what I always used was it better to have people fear you than love you. That’s a Machiavelli. That’ll work everywhere in management circles, as we’ve discussed many times. All right. RJ Roger. I really appreciate you coming on the show and guys, I’ll have a link to, uh, to his, uh, YouTube channel and Michael, Michael scars, Michael D. Leonardo. You know, you need to call him Michael. You don’t call him Mike, call him Michael.

Speaker0:

[55:18] He doesn’t like the name Mikey scars. And, uh, there’s nobody that ever has no one ever called him that to his face.

Speaker1:

[55:24] Oh, really? I’ll be darned.

Speaker0:

[55:26] No, no.

Speaker1:

[55:27] You can, you can say it in general, but not call him that. Interesting. Uh and and a link to the book uh and uh i don’t know i i it’s really good to have you on there and finally meet you rj i’ve watched your show several times and uh not not a lot i’ll have to admit because i only got so much time no

Speaker0:

[55:48] I’m the i’m the same way it’s very few i really don’t watch mob content at all to be honest i.

Speaker1:

[55:53] I don’t watch either just to see what people are doing

Speaker0:

[55:57] It’s not of no interest to me to watch it i don’t watch and it’s not a attack on anybody but I really don’t watch any of the shows. I just, I will sometimes watch a certain guest or I’ve been studying this stuff my whole life. So it’s not that interesting for me to watch it. So I read like Malcolm Gladwell and theory books and Robert Greene and I read like Jordan Peterson and stuff. And I watched Rogan and Lex Friedman and stuff. Like I don’t, I don’t, I have no, I read nothing anymore really about deep historical studies from writers that you probably never even heard of i just read not long ago michael kreitschley’s book um and it was just like historical book on the the creation of the mob and um in america and it was a fantastic book but it’s not something anyone would even read it’s like a textbook yeah it’s like it’s like a textbook it probably sold 200 copies but i have no interest in it either to like to read about it um because i just spent my whole life doing it so interesting Seed.

Speaker1:

[57:02] All right. Thanks a lot, RJ, for coming on. And guys, don’t forget, I like to ride motorcycles. So watch out for motorcycles when you’re out there on the street. And if you have a problem with PTSD, go to that VA website if you’ve been in the service. And if you have a problem with drugs and alcohol, which goes hand in hand with PTSD, why our friend, Mr. Ruggiano said that Angelo Ruggiano has a hotline number on his YouTube channel, and he’s a drug and alcohol counselor i think he still is i’m not sure he is is he still one okay good well i try to find him down there in florida and take your treatment with him then come back and come on the show and tell us all about it no i know i know you won’t do that but uh it would be interesting to have him as your drug and alcohol counselor and and don’t forget i’ve got some stuff out there for sale on my website and on the amazon just go to amazon and search gary jenkins and mafia and you’ll find I got two, three, I got one mob book and two books about Civil War things. And then I’ve got three documentary films about Kansas City Mafia that you can rent for like a buck ninety nine.

Speaker1:

[58:07] So thanks a lot, guys. And I really appreciate you listening to us. And RJ, I thoroughly thank you for coming on. This has been a fun show.

Speaker0:

[58:14] Thank you, brother. I really appreciate the invite. And it’s very nice to be able to finally sit with someone such as yourself. So thank you.