John LaRoy, CEO of Apparel Redefined, interviews Rocco Mossuto from Crestwood about his multifaceted roles and leadership. Rocco is the Director of Parks and Recreation. Rocco discusses his passion for baseball, his coaching philosophy, and the impact of his mentors, particularly his father. He emphasizes the importance of work ethic, consistency, and accountability in both sports and professional settings. Rocco highlights his efforts to develop Crestwood, including expanding the Rec Center. John LaRoy praises Rocco’s contributions to the community and the success of their business partnership.
Key Highlights
• Rocco’s Passion for Baseball and Coaching Philosophy 1:48
• Influential Coaches and Personal Growth 8:49
• John LaRoy’s Coaching Influences 9:03
• Leadership and Community Impact 12:21
• Apparel Redefined and Community Support 18:08
• Future Plans and Community Development 29:03
Presentation Transcription
Curt Anderson 00:02
Hey guys, welcome to Apparel Redefined What an honor, what a privilege. We’ve got John Leroy in the house. John happy, what is today? Happy Wednesday to you.
John LaRoy 00:11
Wednesday. Yeah, thanks, Curt. Happy Wednesday to you. Man. Rocco I think this is probably going to be our most, most watched episode so far. I think, hi,
Rocco Mossuto 00:20
entertain them. Come on.
Curt Anderson 00:22
I couldn’t agree more, we’re going viral with this episode. So Rocco, Hello, happy, happy Wednesday to you. Thank you for joining us. Let’s hear a little bit, little bit about Rocco. What’s going on your world? What’s you’ve got a lot of hats that you wear. What’s tell us a little bit about Rocco. Like I
Rocco Mossuto 00:40
said, before we started talking, Curt, I got a lot of jobs I don’t get paid for, right? Because I like to work technically right now I’m the Director of Parks and Recreation for the Village of Crestwood. So we run all of you sports there. We run our park district building our three parks. I coach a little baseball on the side. I run a couple leagues, and I try to sell shirts for Johnny over here. You know so he can have luxury he’s accustomed to. Guys gotta buy Packers tickets. They’re not cheap, buddy now, now, like, right? So that’s my job. I gotta try to do this for him. Now,
Curt Anderson 01:10
Rocco how, how did you let him become a Packers fan? How did that happen? That was
Rocco Mossuto 01:14
that happened way before I knew John. That was then with the Leroy family. It happens. You know, it’s a great thing right now, we’re good. I push everybody I can over here to apparel redefine, or underdog, or a and r, I don’t, you know, sometimes I don’t know what the name is the company here, but I send them to John, and John straightens it out, and then people start buying stuff. It’s great. It works out. You just, just, I
Curt Anderson 01:38
know a guy, right? Just, I know a guy we’re on the south side. I just, I send with John. He’s got it covered. Rocco, let’s go here. Dude, your your background, super impressive. We would love encourage anybody to connect with you on LinkedIn. Baseball looks like you’ve got a little baseball in your history. Did I see that correctly? Just a little bit of baseball.
Rocco Mossuto 01:55
Yeah, a little, I’m, I think I’m working on 20 years here of coaching, uh, some as a head coach, some as an assistant, you know. And then I had, I had a school, as we’re talking about earlier, try to get me out of there, you know. But like the cockroach I am, I came right back, and they can’t get away from me, you know, it’s impossible, right? But, yeah, baseball is my first love. I love coaching baseball. I love coaching the kids. You know, I’ve been getting paid to do that a long time, but now I get to do the park district, and the park district and a park district lets me do that, so I’m living my best life right now. Well,
Curt Anderson 02:25
I absolutely love it, you know, speaking our love language. John, right, big baseball fan. So what attracted you, what brought your passion, your skills, your experience, into the world of baseball? Let’s, let’s go there first.
Rocco Mossuto 02:39
Well, I always played as a kid, and I enjoyed that. I played a lot of sports, but I enjoyed baseball because I like baseball was always fair. You got what you deserve, right? One day, you hit a pop up, the guy drops it, you’re on. The next day, hit a line of writing a guy, you’re out. It’s fair. It evened out throughout time, but if you worked hard, you could always get better at it. And I always wanted to coach, because my coaches were a great impact in my life, so I want to do that for young men, and it’s even more important now, because young men really don’t have the role models that they need in their life today, and that’s where, you know, we see a lot of problems overall. Kids just aren’t getting pushed in the right direction. And that was what I like to do as a coach, more as a mentor than to coach baseball. I always used to tell my kids, I’m not really good baseball coach. You’re probably not going to learn a lot about baseball from me, but you’re going to learn a lot about life, and then we’ll figure out the baseball part, right? So that’s what I liked about it was a way for me to connect with the younger generation through something that I love to do and that they love to do.
Curt Anderson 03:37
Man, I couldn’t love that more. I say that all the time baseball is they’re running the same rock. All right? Baseball is life. Life is baseball. There’s really no separation. Let’s go back in time. I don’t want to put you on the spot. You mentioned your coaches that had a huge impact on you. Can you think I’d love to hear a coach story that really laid that huge impact on help shape you as a guy that’s you know you’re sharing your passion, your expertise, to the future generation, the current generations, who had that really big impact on you.
Rocco Mossuto 04:09
Well, it’s hard. I had three great coaches in my life, right? Starting out as a kid, my dad now, he’s coached me for a long time. We don’t always get along, you know, we had our moments, like any father and son will. And then I worked for my dad for 15 years. So we’ve had a lot of great things in our life. I had in high school Andy Sienna from Oak Forest. He’s a legendary coach. And then I had Mike Dooley in college. All three of them were great. I learned stuff from all of them. But, you know, I gotta give the old man the nod, because till this day, I’m still learning stuff from the old man and what he instilled in me as a kid on the baseball field and off, was what I want to instill in my son is, if you work hard every day and you try to do the right thing, things are going to turn out your way, not every single day and every single moment, but at the end, when it’s all said and done, you’re going to get what you deserve in life. And he really instilled that work at. Can me that I think is what led me to be successful in my life. My biggest problem is, like we talked about earlier, I’m great at outworking a problem, but I’m not great at passive income. I need to learn how to make money without overworking all the time, right, like the rest of us. But it’s, it’s it’s a blessing, it’s a curse, all at the same time. But that’s really I gotta attribute that to the old man. My mom and dad really laid the groundwork for me in my life, and I was lucky that he was able to coach for me as a kid. And then later in life, when I was a head coach at Saint Xavier, he came back, and he was our JV coach, and the kids loved him, you know, he had some old school he came in talking about, like, calisthenics. And the kids were like, Boy scale esthetics, you know, man, I’m doing push ups and stuff, but they start, you know, they because he was genuine. They understood where he was going, and they liked that, and we had a great family atmosphere. But that’s what I learned from the old man, is my work ethic really is one of the best things that I think I can attribute to Him amongst many, right? What
Curt Anderson 05:58
a what a gift. Man. Rocco, what’s dad’s name? Please. Tony. Tony. Sorry. Big shout out. Lots of love to Tony. If we were to ask when, say, future player of yours were 20 years down the road and they asked, they were asked that same question, and they’re like, Man coach Rocco did this, what would you love to what legacy, what imprint would you love to have on this generation that you’re teaching,
Rocco Mossuto 06:23
ah, we try to still instill that work ethic, the discipline and the accountability, right? And I think that most of my guys will tell you that I was always fair to them. They always got what they earned, right? I one of the best things a kid ever said. You know, some people won’t like this, but some people do. I really loved it. I had a kid Ben Zordani, who was a captain for me. He worked really hard for four years. We had practice, and a freshman, you know, made a good play, did something, and he like looked and I didn’t say nothing to him, right? And Ben goes, coach, mas not going to compliment you when you do your job. It’s like breathing. You’re supposed to do that every day, but he’s going to let you know when you’re not doing something right. He goes, if you don’t hear from him, you’re doing good, and when you do something excellent, he’s going to let you know, but if you do what you’re supposed to do every day, just do it and don’t worry about it, right? And that, I thought that was great, because really, that’s what I want the kids to learn. And for a kid to say that to another kid, those guys got it. They understood, right? You got to get up every day in your life. You got to go to work. You might have a family, you might have kids. You got to pay your bills. Not everything is going to go your way. Get up and do your job every day. Everything’s going to be fine, right? Wow.
Curt Anderson 07:34
I love it. It’s it’s simple, not always easy, but it’s simple, John, you’ve played, you’ve played a sport or two in your in your lifetime, I know a little bit of hockey, a little bit of baseball, still out there, playing softball. What have been, how about a coach that’s had a huge impact on you,
John LaRoy 07:51
like Rocco said, I mean, similar path my dad first, you know, in baseball, and he didn’t, he didn’t really play many other sports as a kid, basketball, a little bit, but he’s my size, so basketball was going to take him anywhere, but really into baseball. He actually played with Saint Xavier, like Saint Xavier in terms of baseball. On the south side here is a legendary school. Unfortunately, the shit happened with Rocco, but it was taking the program in a really good direction, because it was kind of a, not a good area for a while, and just with the resurgence of like, there wasn’t a focus on Midwest baseball for a long time. You know, you’d be lucky one or two guys in an area got drafted, and then the explosion of talent here with Rocco’s helping. You know, I know you have a lot of kids that think they should go do one and this and that, but wrong answer to your question. So it was my dad first, and what I was getting to is like he knew baseball, but he knew that baseball, if he pushed me that long year round, which is, you know, kind of counterproduct, or counterintuitive what you see today, you need something else. So he never really played hockey, but he got me into hockey. Learned to skate right after I could learn how to walk two and a half years old. And he hung around from, like, learning to skate up until, like, maybe seven or eight. And then you realize, like, Hey, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. It’s time to let someone out. So I think that was, it was hard for him to do that. He was always around, but he knew what he was talking about in baseball. So he was my baseball coach, pretty much all the way up until high school. And then Gary Johnson, one of another southwest Saint zabar graduate, was a really instrumental coach in my lifetime, and that was right about from like eighth grade all the way through college. You know, he was our summer coach. John Cangelosi was a, was a was a great coach mine, because he was my size and played in the Major League so a lot of the stuff that I learned in terms of the skill part of the game, like everything, like a Rocco coach, and the way I coach, the way my dad coach, was a lot more about the team, understanding the game, working hard, you know, busting your ass, hustling, control. Of the things that you can control, and some of the stuff I learned from Cangelosi was more about the intricacies of the game and the skill part of the game that he was better at than most people that he played against, like how to take a lead off, how did, like, all the finer things in the game that I didn’t really learn because most of my coaches here on the south side were all about, like, the team aspect and understand the game, right? And then you get a specialist that really only stayed in the major leagues as long as you did, because you can steal a base, right, you know? And that’s a lost art in the game today. So to learn from that guy was really cool. But then just understanding from a defensive side, like what to look for as a catcher, for a guy that knew how to steal a base, and what you can prepare for. And I’m just taking that knowledge and translating into translating it to the kids that I taught and coached in the high school level for a long time. But yeah, I’d say my dad, Coach Johnson, then a hockey level Mike Kelly was a really good coach of mine. It’s just a resounding message, no matter the coach, but it’s one thing for a coach to say, work hard, play hard, type thing. But you see the guys that aren’t genuine and the guys that tell you to coach to work hard and play hard, you could tell that they were full of shit. It didn’t but the guys that I’m naming, I know that they worked hard, and I know that when they did play they played hard just because you see them like screwing around in practice. You know what I mean? Like they take it serious, but they like to have fun. But is it you inherently know you get that gut feeling like I want to bust my ass for this guy, because I want not only to earn his respect, but I know we’ll run into each other in a South Side like and for me, as a coach like Rocco said, I’m running the kids I coach in high school, and they’re reaching out on LinkedIn and stuff like that. They want to come meet, and they’re like, man, you know, one of the things I respect about your practices, the way you coach the game, is like, we didn’t necessarily agree with you or enjoy it, but god damn i If I appreciated that. Went through it because when I got to college, because it played a Notre Dame after I went to Marist and, you know, went down South Carolina, and you’re like, when I got there, it was easy, you know, even though I wasn’t the most talented guy in the group, even though I was in the high school level, when I got to South Carolina, I got to know him, and I got here the way you prepared me, and it was easy for me to be a leader. And that was probably the coolest thing ever. All right, man,
Curt Anderson 12:18
what a great conversation. Rocco, how about this one? So alright, you just mentioned leadership that I’m a perfect segue to my next question. Rocco. So now, as you know, we get a little bit more seasoned. You know, time flies by. So I’d love to hear how you take your baseball acumen and how do you apply that to your leadership in your role as director of park and recreation. Just share a little bit of like, how you know because that you’re so forefront in the community, right? This is a civic pride thing. You’re You’re beautifying the community, you’re bringing people together, they’re celebrating just share a little bit about, like, your leadership approach on how you really facilitate the community.
Rocco Mossuto 12:57
I mean, being in charge of a business, being a leader is like being a coach, right? You’re in charge of a team. You’re trying to get guys to work together. For me, especially at the park district, right? Everybody that works for me is young. This is like a first time job. This is how you learn to get in the workforce. This is when learn, right, how to show up a little bit early, to stay a little bit late to get your tasks done that people don’t care. You can’t bring your mom or dad and on your interview, right? And they say, Well, my son or daughter is great? Yeah, I really don’t care. Either you do your job or you don’t, right? And people learn from me. And I say, I say this, the guys I coach, if you could play for me, or if you can work for me, you can work anywhere, cuz we teach you, right? We don’t, don’t make it easy for you every day. And you get held accountable. If you do something wrong, I’m going to tell you, I don’t care you screwed up. Fix it if you do something right, we’re going to say, Hey, good job. You do what you’re supposed to do. That’s your job. Come back and do the same thing tomorrow. The biggest thing today with the young kids that work for me and the young kids everywhere is consistency, right? They accomplish one thing, and they think, I’m good for a couple weeks, you’re not. You have to come every single day. You have to come to work every single day. You gotta come to life every single day. And the biggest thing for us is, if you take a day off, right? And we’re doing basketball or we’re doing swim lessons, that kid doesn’t get out of that lesson what he needs to get, or she, and you took the day off, and you just ruined the day for that kid because you didn’t feel like coming to work. So you gotta be on every single day. And it’s not easy for people because they’re not used to that. People love now I love I hear it all the time. Oh man, you get 40 vacation days. You better take them, or you get PT the whole time. You better take this. You better take ask my wife, the last vacation I was on was our honeymoon. I think it was eight years ago. I don’t know. I can’t remember i But I enjoy going to work every day. And I don’t think that they should all be like I am, but they should have a little bit in there where they say, Yeah, I want to get this task done. I want to do this. And people will say, your job doesn’t care. You see these posts all the time, right? No. Remembers the days you worked. No one remembers think this, that that BS, that’s bullshit. Because if you go to work every day and you work hard, people know that. And then, like when I got fired and you need another job, you get that job. Because people say this person shows up to work every day they do what they’re supposed to do. And if you can do that and go to work every day, your kids see that, and your kids know that when they grow up, part of life is going to work and getting things done, and then you can have fun after that, right? There has to be the right balance. So that’s the big thing that we try to teach, is to get rid of this. Everybody talks about this work life balance, but it’s more like I need to do my vacations in this first and then I’ll come to work. No, you need to go to work and earn your vacation first, right, right? So that’s what we try to teach the young kids. That’s what we try to teach in the youth program I run, we got 300 kids in baseball over there, and I teach them all. It’s not about jersey, it’s not about the trophy, it’s not about this, about coming every day. It’s the journey, and that’s what we’re trying to young kids, both in our sports and the kids that work for me at the at the park district, some of
John LaRoy 16:08
the building occurs, some I just listened to on a podcast. So Australia just passed an employment rule that you can be fined if you’re the owner of the company, if you mandate, or if your employee reports that you are asking them to respond to a text or an email after their office hours, right? And they’re saying that employers and they’re pushing that it’s 280 hours a year, which really comes down to about an hour a day. So you know, it’s freaking ridiculous, because they’re trying to hurt the person that wants to get ahead in a company that’s innovative. You know, startups don’t happen on a nine to five schedule, right? And it’s all about changing this mindset of like, what should happen versus what really happens. And people that are successful that’s that’s nothing to you, right? An extra hour day, whether before work, after work, working, two jobs, working, working out all that type of stuff. I just can’t stand the belittling of the work hard mindset, because it’s, it’s out of jealousy. People are jealous that they can’t have that. So they want it easier and they want it for free, or they want to demonize with other people. So yeah, it’s, it’s a lot of crazy stuff. But here’s another, last little antidote, down in that in that spot, the C the former CEO of Starbucks. Everyone knows Starbucks right when he took over the company, they were worth $140 billion when he just got fired a couple weeks ago, they were worth 70 billion so he lost $70 billion of valuation that company. Two weeks before he was fired, he talked about live on a podcast of how Don’t call him after six o’clock. Don’t call him on the weekends. Don’t do this. Don’t do that. And that’s coming from the leadership. What do you think his his CMOS, his C suite, people the executive down below him, the VPs, if he’s got that mentality, they all have mentality. And if you’re afraid to talk to your boss or, you know, have a serious conversation, don’t talk to me after six o’clock. I’m on vacation eight weeks a year. Well, you know what? There’s no surprise why you lost $70 billion worth of preparation. You know what? I mean. Like, that’s what you get, you know? So I thought it was a perfect, perfect example of, if you you know he, he probably didn’t get to that level of success with that mindset. But it’s like, it’s when people get to this success platform, and they reach their pinnacle, they go socialist, and it’s like, what the hell is better with but yeah, it’s never going to
Curt Anderson 18:30
happen between us too, right, right, right. Well, I love that, and I think I love the foundation that you laying Rocco, where we’re talking, you know, like doing things with integrity, being consistent, just killer work ethic, you know. And you don’t have to cross the line of that work life balance. It’s just like, you know, being passionate and being proud of what you do and delivering value to the community, just like you’re doing at Crestwood with, you know, 300 kids is not a small task, you know. And you’re just sharing your passion and your enthusiasm with the community. Let’s slide into John and I love talking about, like, building that culture. And especially, why I love that you’re here today is we’re talking about that community pride, you know. So you’ve got the baseball program in Crestwood, you’re cleaning, you know, you’ve got the parks the recreation, let’s, you know, shamelessly, let’s give a little shout out to John at apparel redefined. How important is it for your kids to have, you know, they wear that uniform inside. Just share a little bit about, like, how important that is for what you see with your kids and in uniforms. Well,
Rocco Mossuto 19:29
I mean, you know, it is every you got travel ball, you got all everybody. It’s the uniform, it’s the shirt, it’s the hat, it’s all the swag, the gear that they can get, right? And the most important thing for our kids, because we have rec ball kids. We don’t have travel kids. Everybody’s on a budget, so we’re trying to do things at a reasonable price, but still give them something that looks nice. So the same as when I was at St Xavier, when I was at Cal st, Joe, we’ve always used Apparel Redefined, because they do the best job of getting us what we want, right? And I say. That because I had a little experience with a company I’m not going to name before Apparel redefined, stuff was late all the time. Stuff was printed wrong. And they just said, Hey, it happens, you know. So then we switched over apparel redefine, and some hats came in from China. They were terrible, terrible, right? John, I don’t remember this. Yeah, he goes, I can’t even give these to you. They’re so bad, we’re going to make sure they’re right. My kids had the right hats to play huge. Then the school I was at switched. We had to go with this other large company that I won’t name. This company knows, they call me every two weeks at the park district, and I say to them, I will never go with you as long as I’m alive. I will never buy anything from you, because we really here in the community, support local businesses, right? Apparently, it’s great that it’s right here in Crestwood right now. It’s on the south side. We buy from people local. We buy from Diamond sports. They’re local. When we do our stuff, we use beggars pizza, they’re local. They’re family owned. On the south side, we have a pride of sticking together, so we use a local company. But with that being said, that because they produce John knows, and the reason I use a lot of companies I know is and I tell people I know them, so I know if something’s wrong, I can go yell at them, and they’re not going to cry about it, right? But then the stuff gets done. We got fall ball coming up. We got 41 teams, really, I should give them two weeks lead time, right? So they can print everything. Everything’s good. You’re going to ask Derek sometimes I give him three days, and I’m like, I need the shit tough. You know, he’s right about it. Everybody in the warehouse probably pissed. They all probably hate me, but they get the stuff done. And my kids get the shirt. We do this huge wiffle ball tournament. We got 30 plus teams. I give them shirts, 48 hours before I got the shirts, when I need them for the tournament, so they know the value of keeping that relationship. Because I’d like to think that over time, I’ve given enough accounts over here to them so that they’re actually making some money off somebody else, probably not me, you know, because I’m always screwing it up. But somebody else I gave them is probably making it worthwhile. But the kids love the shirts, the hats we get from the gear we had at Saint Xavier was top notch. Every everywhere we went. We went down to Florida to play, guys would say, where’d you get that uni from? Where’d that hat from? Where’d you get this from? And we always had something good. And the good thing is, you know, I’m crazy, like everybody else, sometimes I think I got a great idea. And then John or Derek would say, that’s kind of going to look stupid. Maybe you shouldn’t do that. So they’ve saved me from making some mistakes in my apparel situation. Also, right? But that the importance of local, local business, like John said, you got a lot of kids that work for him, that live around here. You got kids that we know that work for him, that live around here. Kids get stuff for the program from a local business, then they understand we don’t have to use the big national business and get ripped off, right? I don’t need a middleman. I don’t want somebody making money that I don’t know who they are. I want the money to stay in the community and then get put back into the community. All right,
Curt Anderson 22:55
man, drop the mic there. John, how about that one? So, well, so Rocco, you know, I’m going off script a little bit. So trust, man, trust is, you know, consistency, integrity. Trust is just so critical. It’s all about those relationships, right? How do you let’s talk about like, people that are leaning on you, you’re leaning on John, like, how do you keep that healthy communication? Like you said, you know, you’re, you’re, a little bit on the what’s the word I want to say, John forward, blunt, right? So if somebody’s, if somebody’s not living up to Rocco’s expectations, you’re not keeping that, you’re like, you’re letting that person know, right? My How’s that for an impression? Right? Yeah, you
Rocco Mossuto 23:35
know where you stand all the time. With me, it’s pretty easy, right? You’re going to get yelled at shit. It’s going to happen. I’m not always right. I’m not saying that right, but you gotta be held accountable, just like I need to be held accountable. I know I shouldn’t put stuff in late, but I do, right? They get it fixed. For me, we do our best to fix it the next time, but I’ll always tell someone who asked me, you know, because they’re dealing with these bigger companies, because you get some fake discount, or to have you buy this, to get this, or whatever it is. And I say, No, this. They don’t do these programs at apparel, but you get what you pay for. You get it on time. They give you the right material. They don’t show you one thing and send you another thing. So the guys that work with me know that I’m giving them someone that’s good. And John knows when I give him someone, I’m giving him someone that needs it to be done, right? So we’re all accountable by each other, because we know, like I would say, and I think that Johnny probably believes this. Oh shit. Rappa gave me this guy for sure. I’m not going to screw it up, because I don’t want him to get pissed at me. But then your network grows, and you make more sales, and you find more people by doing that each time. When you come through each time, then your trust gets built with each new company and each new person you work with. And then you build off that momentum. And then you get to the point where, like today, when I pull up and there’s 6000 boxes outside, I said, Can we get some of these boxes out of here? Can we get rid of some of this stuff? Right? But it’s good, because. Are so backed up because you got so many clients, but they’re all still getting their stuff on time. And that’s the important thing. That’s how you build the trust, is by coming through on the promises that were made.
Curt Anderson 25:09
Well, I love Hey and John. I’m giving another shout out to Tony. What a what a wise man that Tony created here. So just love the wisdom, love the passion, John, when you’re working with somebody like Rocco. Just here it’s, you know, somebody involved in the community, or, you know, with kids. How, you know, talk a little bit on how apparel just, you know, really partners with someone like Rocco just make his life a little bit easier. So when he’s, you know, you get that 48 hour time limit. How are you helping a guy like Rocco?
John LaRoy 25:39
Well, Rocco’s been around for a while, especially like in the baseball world, when he was back at exams, he was, he was a great customer to work with, because he’s a guy that you know Midwest baseball Here starts the collegiate level, January, right? But you start hitting the field february, march. But he’s a guy that would be ordering in October, right? When no one else was thinking about baseball. He was prepared, and he knew, because after going through this for a long time, everyone in the Midwest is ordering at the same time, so you’re limited on stock Now, fast forward, where we’re at today. He knows what he wants. You know, it’s it’s easy to work with a customer that says, hey, here’s what I want, here’s the quantities, here’s this, here’s what I’m for. Jackson, there’s a lot of people come in and it’s okay, but it’s like, hey, what do you want? Well, I don’t know, what do you think I should want? And it’s like, okay, that can work if we have two to three months, and it’s a little bit back and forth, but if you are coming in a week before something’s due, you know, we can’t, we can’t guess how to make the pizza. You gotta tell us you want cheese or sausage, you know? I mean, it’s like, right? Tell us we gotta operate because there’s, there’s, you know, other things that we gotta do. We gotta order the product. We gotta get it in, we gotta inventory. We gotta print it, we gotta package it, get it out. So he’s always, you know, very blunt on this, what I want this one I need to buy. Go do it. And, you know, my sales team, Derek and curve, they prefer that, you know what I mean, because, like, there’s only so much time in the day and trying to understand what every person wants, really, what you’re just doing is giving a reflection of what you want and trying to convince that person that that’s what they want. And it’s easier if you say, just give me something what you’re thinking, colors, style, whatever you like. You know you can go on Google and search baseball informal come with 10,000 and I might be number 999, in my head, and he’s number three. You know, it’s like when you come into the Google images. So just give me a direction, and then we can go and make it happen in a in a quick amount of time. So that and organization, you know, like sizing, back in the day with college uniforms, sizing, pants, sizing Jersey tops, sizing hats, getting kids in line, you know, quickly. Hey, we can get this done in an hour. Your kids in and out. Organization is key, and now you got it, you know, all the way down at the district level. You got parents. And you know, it’s crazy how interconnected the south side is. You know, you’re from Buffalo parochial area as well. But the reputation is something that really means a lot, right? And exactly when Rocco gives me a guy, I treat it like Rocco, and he knows that. And conversely, hey, you got someone does this, does this. It’s more than just apparel. Hey, rock. We got a catering guy. Yeah? Iraq, you got this guy? Yeah, you know, we all got guys, but those guys will fall out of our Rolodex real quickly if they, if they screw with one of our friends. So it’s just upholding the reputation doing what you say and saying what you do. And sometimes you have to say no because it’s it’s worse to say yes and miss it or mess it up than just saying, dude, I’d love to help you out, but I can’t right now. So, having that trust, that you know, that you could be confident in saying, dude, I can’t do this right now is also something that’s we’ve had to say before, and I don’t like it, but it’s
Rocco Mossuto 28:53
part of life. It happens. Yeah,
Curt Anderson 28:56
yeah. I, you know, just being honest, you know, I would say, if somebody invites me somewhere, and I’ve known, you know, just I’d rather say no and have you mad at me now than not show up the night of, and then you’re mad at me for not showing up. So just get that no out of the way right away. Rocco, so let’s start whining now. And I know you guys are super busy for the future, my friend, what are you super excited about in Crestwood village, or the, you know, baseball in Crestwood? What’s on the horizon? What’s super exciting for you on the future?
Rocco Mossuto 29:24
Well, the park district’s been building since I got here four years ago, which is great. We bought a few properties behind we’re talking about expanding the Rec Center building to offer more programs to our community. We do a lot of stuff for kids. We do a lot of stuff for seniors. Those are two high need groups in our area. We got a couple of things in the cooker here. We got a lot of property that the village owns. We’re in negotiations right now with a large national baseball company about building some new fields, building some hotels. It’s kind of exciting to get a few new things, because sports tourism is an industry that’s never going to die, right? Because as a parent, you’ll do whatever you can for your kid to Part. Participate in sports unlimited. It’s recession proof. It’s great. It’s great for our village because it brings people into town to spend money that we want in town, right? They go to target, they go to our local restaurants, they go to at the office, they go to our bars, they stay at the hotels, they go to the movie theater, they go to culverts. That’s what we want. We want people to come in, stay local, play local, build our economy. So that Crestwood stays the place that everybody wants to live, right? And it’s great. I can’t I wish I could give you the name of the company, right? But we’ve been negotiating one for a couple years now. We’re getting closer. This is the crazy thing me. I came from private industry. My dad owned a small business. We wanted to do something. We just did it. Now I work for, I hate to say the government, because I don’t really want to work for the government, but kind of the municipality, a lot of red tape. You gotta make everybody happy. You gotta fill out all this paperwork. You know, there’s a lot more going on, so it takes longer to get stuff done. I wish we could cut some of that out, some of the bureaucracy of it and making sure that everybody’s happy, and saying, this is the right thing to do. Let’s, let’s just get it done. But that’s the system that we live in, and that’s what we gotta work with. But things are going well in Crestwood, things are building. It’s great. We got a new collegiate League. We started that up for kids that are more, you know, like probably me and John are we like to play baseball. We like to play sports, but we also like to go out with our friends on the weekend. We like to go to weekend. We like to go to Lake House. We like to have a good time. It’s that balance I was talking about earlier. You play, you do what you’re supposed to do, and then you can go out and have fun, right? So we’re building a lot here. It’s exciting, happy to be here today. Hopefully this helps out. We get a few more viewers going here, right? We’re going to pump this out to everybody.
Curt Anderson 31:37
We’re going to double it, man, have to take from
Rocco Mossuto 31:41
everybody that I know, because I’m gonna put this out here, they’re gonna be meming this at me for probably the next six months. But that I’ll jump on a grenade for you guys. I’ll do that. That’s funny guy, you
Curt Anderson 31:51
know, John, you always you need, we need more racks. Everybody needs a rack in their life. So Rocco, I’m gonna let you go. Last question for you, best business advice that you’ve ever received. I know you had a lot of great coaches, like great mentors. You had Tony in your life. God bless you. How about best business advice that you received that you would love to pass along?
Rocco Mossuto 32:14
I like to pass it along, but I don’t adhere to this because I stupid myself. But I had my college coach, Mike Dooley, said to me, I started giving lessons, baseball lessons the kids for free. And he said, Why would you do something for free that people will pay you for? So I would say to people, if you want to make a little bit more money in your life, you should probably charge people for the knowledge that you have, because they don’t have that knowledge, and at some point, unfortunately, they’re probably not going to repay the favor. They’re going to charge you for the knowledge that they have. So don’t do something for free that you get paid for.
Curt Anderson 32:49
Brilliant, absolutely brilliant advice. Man, where were you 30 years ago for that one, my friend. So guys,
Rocco Mossuto 32:54
I don’t even listen to myself. I do stuff for free every day, stupid, but I hope somebody else learns from me. Right? That’s
Curt Anderson 33:00
right. Pass it on, man. Pass it on, John. Closing thoughts, anything that you want to share as we wind down?
John LaRoy 33:07
No. I mean, we moved to Crestwood almost six years ago, and my wife’s from Crestwood, and it’s a great town. Probably going to be moving out of here in about a year, but not too far away. We’ll always be close to Crestwood. But one thing I can say all say, like, about Rocco too, is that when you hear, you know, like, yeah, I work for the government municipality, he’s completely different than what you would envision the normal government municipality Parks and Rec director, right? Like he truly has a micro and macro perspective for everything that he does, like you’re talking about this large national baseball company coming in. Well, he’s not just thinking about that. He’s got the restaurants, he’s got the hotels. He’s got other ancillary businesses. It’s going to benefit. They got to talk about staffing. He’s got a collegiate baseball league he just started up here, which is already benefiting hotels, local businesses. Now he can help these kids be employed during, you know, one during college, they could work as a baseball facility, just the the pride and excitement around Crestwood. It’s not that it was like this small, sleepy town before him, but it kind of was. But it was like he brings energy, as you can see, everywhere he goes. My father in law works out at the Rec Center where he’s at. And, you know, people love to talk to Rocco, and it’s, you know, you talk about like a microcosm. He’s one person in the village, but the personality is genuine, and it precedes him, and great things are happening in this community, in this village, mainly because of him. So he’s got a lot to be a proud of, but it’s, it’s genuine, it’s authentic, and people realize it,
Curt Anderson 34:44
yeah, and I in in Rockwall, I you know, the government job, per se, you know, or quotes, I guess, around it, you know you’re delivering, you’re selling civic pride. You know you’re giving people to puff up their chests about, you know, their their community, everything that you’re. And as far as what you’re doing with the kids, so admirable, so inspiring, you know, and what you’re selling John, what do we talk about? You know, we talk about selling memories. You know, the you’re selling confidence for kids. You’re selling them priceless, you know. Just think you know John. You probably know kids that you played, you know, baseball with when you were eight years old, right? Like you’re just selling relationships and memories. So Rocco, my hat’s off to you, dude, commend you, applaud you, appreciate you. You’re doing great work, and we just we thank you for everything that you do, for for John, because John needs all the help he can get, right, right? John, yeah,
Rocco Mossuto 35:33
yeah, for sure, man, I don’t even know if you’d still be in business if I wasn’t around. That’s right, John, I don’t you know what he does when I’m not here.
Curt Anderson 35:42
I sure that’s right. So hey, well, thank you guys for joining us. We’re going to check out. So hey, stop by man. Go see Rocco. Connect with him on LinkedIn. Check out everything he’s got going on stop by apparel redefine. Check out all of our social we appreciate you guys and John. We’ll be back here with another amazing guest, not as good as Rocco, but we’ll be back with another wonderful guest
Rocco Mossuto 36:02
here soon, setting the table for all the good ones that are going to come see. I got the opening embarrassment out. See both seat they got me here to make fun of. Now, you can do it. It’s safe. It’s okay, right?
Curt Anderson 36:16
Dude, you set the bar high. Man, you set the bar high. You’re being very modest. So alright, we’ll cut out and we’ll thank you guys. We’ll see you next time.