Back in early 2006, I was given an opportunity to help a local businessman by being the "radio pro" he needed to put his weekend radio show on the air. It's not easy to make radio hosts out of non-radio business owners. They tend to think that since they have been successful in one realm they are automatically going to be successful in any realm. It usually doesn't work out. I was assured this business leader would bring some radio knowledge and personality to the table, so I agreed to help out. The show was "The Denny Hecker Show," and the business owner was Denny himself.

When you sit in a room with a person who is extremely wealthy and successful, you can't help but feel intimidated. I've had many wealthy business people use their "success" as the justification to demean anyone they deem beneath them. Not Denny. Denny never once talked down to me. As a matter of fact, he always took my advice and depended on me to run the radio side of the show. He realized I was there to help him, and my skill set, while not exactly rocket science, was one I knew better than he ever would.

Depending on people to help make you better is what makes successful people successful, but there was something more.

Living for the business game
This weekly sit down gave us a chance to get to know each other. Hecker is a man who lives for the business game. If callers said they had a problem with one of his products, he would get their information and do his best to fix it. He loves his family, and as demanding as he was of his managers, he would also compliment them to no end. He complimented me for decisions and choices I made. And with Denny, it was a two-way street. I was surprised when at Christmas he not only gave me a nice gift, but he stopped and we talked about my family. He never gave me lip service when we talked outside of the show. When I left in 2007, he shook my hand and told me to call him if I ever needed anything.

With a heavy heart, I have watched Denny's business empire meltdown. I am not privy to the internal discussions that got him to this point, but he isn't the only businessman who's had a tough time with the current economic downturn. Denny has made some decisions that have burned him. Although it's not the most fundamentally sound business plan, he did what many successful business people do: leverage wealth from column A to help the numbers in column B. My guess is he never thought so many sectors of the U.S. economy would fail at the same time. The hardest part for me is the near daily public lashing that some of the media in this town, specifically the newspapers, have been giving him. This tabloid-style petty vilification has been an undeserved public rubbing of salt into his wounds.

No similar attacks on Petters
At the same time Denny's financial juggling balls started falling from the sky, another "successful" businessman in town, Tom Petters, was going through problems of his own as his once great empire crashed. Although innocent until proven guilty, his problem isn't that he failed because of risky business practices or of an economy collapsing around him. Petters is accused of stealing people's money, spending it on gross indulgences, and of running a Ponzi multibillion-dollar scheme. You would think a person accused of such outrageous behavior would be the target of a rabid media, but where are the daily attacks on him or his lackeys? Where are the voyeur-esque articles about him? Nowhere. Even though the allegations against Petters are far more serious than anything Denny has done, some media seem to only want to see Denny's blood in the water.

I feel bad for Denny. I feel bad for the people who have bought Denny's products and might be in consumer limbo with them. I feel bad for all of his employees who have lost their jobs, or will lose their jobs, to the cheers of small people relishing in Denny's troubles. But I really feel sorry for these same small people as they get pleasure from watching someone's downfall. To those people, let me say this: You have to be intelligent to make, and lose, the amount of money Denny has. When this is finished, he might have to start all over again, but I'd bank on him in a heartbeat. I have no doubt he will be successful again, and when success returns to Denny Hecker, it will be interesting to watch his detractors change their tune in the hopes of getting a piece of the pie. I just hope they enjoy the taste of crow.

Matthew McNeil is the host of a radio show on KSTP AM 1500.